Half an hour passed. Forty-five minutes. An hour. He shifted, then began to pace in a tight circle under the cover of the trees. The brandy was long-since drained and he would have to be heading back to the street soon.
Then, faintly, he heard it. A stifled cry had somehow found its way to his ears. He stopped breathing and strained his will to listen. He could hear his own heart pounding like a hammer on an anvil, and he was certain that it would drown out any other sound that might straggle through these trees. But there! He heard it again. A low moaning, certainly one of distress. He moved quickly but quietly in the direction of the sound, picking his way through the trees, avoiding the exposed roots and fallen branches in his path.
Then again, fainter but somehow closer. Just ahead he could make out a bench and two figures, one bent over another splayed recklessly across it. He was mesmerized by the scene, and before he was aware of it he had approached to within six feet.
Something was quite wrong. There was a weak, whimpering cry, almost drowned out by another, more disturbing noise. Greedy, hungry, almost lewd. Sucking. He was beyond compelled and, without a second thought, hit the switch on the flashlight. He was nearly knocked back by what he saw bathed in the sudden light.
The kneeling figure turned swiftly and rose towards him. Isaac caught a brief moment of madness in the light’s beam. A tube dangled from the arm of the man on the bench, blood spurting from it like the damaged water fountain he had passed earlier. The face of the man who came at him was smeared with it, dark and wet and obscene, before the light was knocked savagely from his trembling hand.
Then the stranger had him by the throat, his face close to Isaac’s own. There was no bottom to the well-dark eyes that looked into his. He was squeezing the very life from Isaac’s lungs when the situation changed abruptly. The man loosened his grip and stared harder into Isaac’s wide eyes.
“I know you,” he whispered. “Where have we met, old man?”
Isaac took the opportunity to thrust his cane up between them, bringing the silver-knobbed handle into a violent collision with the man’s chin, and sending him staggering just long enough for Isaac to turn and flee.
He had covered less than a hundred feet when he ran straight into the arms of another man, coming up the narrow path with four others. The sudden encounter took them all by surprise. Isaac stifled a yell, realized that this was an inadvertent rescue, and composed himself quickly. He looked back over his shoulder as five questioning voices rushed at him. He turned back to them and hastily explained that he had just witnessed an assault. They all hurried back to the scene, but there was no sign of what Isaac had described. Nothing at all. Even his flashlight had vanished.
Now the men turned their eyes on him. Someone muttered something about the smell of serious alcohol on Isaac’s breath and another ventured a question as to whether he had a pass from the shelter to be out so late. Then they walked deliberately away from him. And Isaac walked quickly back out of the park, to practically leap into his waiting taxi.
Back in his room, Isaac could not stop trembling. He turned on every light in the entire suite and drank steadily from the bottle of Remy on the credenza.
“It was insanity! That man was drinking the other man’s blood! No, Isaac, no. There is no way that that was what you saw,” he reassured himself weakly.
He dropped to his knees, Cognac in hand, and prayed with fervor. Then he crawled into bed, intellectually and emotionally spent, as the macabre scene replayed itself over and over before his clamped eyes. Right on cue, visions of Auschwitz joined in the conspiracy to unravel the edges of his remaining mind. The flames and the smoke of the ovens, the horrific cries. He thought the he had left the core of that smoldering nightmare behind him. It was the 1990’s now. But what he had just witnessed was more like nineteenth-century fiction.
Some sick creature was drinking the blood of vagrants. He obviously had delusions that Bram Stoker could understand. And he was preying on those who were less likely to struggle with any sort of vigor. Because he had no fangs, he was using some sort of syringe and tube contraption and slurping away like a fuel thief siphons from an unwatched car.
Isaac knew that there was a wayward group of misfits in New Orleans who wore eye liner and pierced their bodies in unimaginable places. They dressed in costume every waking day and wandered the city by night. They desperately assured everyone who would listen that they were vampires. But the person he saw on this night was taking their childish fantasies to a whole new level.
Was he responsible for the morphine as well? And how could he know that his victims were already dying? That went way beyond the credibility of coincidence. Was he a doctor? What doctor would have access to that many medical histories? Hell, those kinds of people didn’t even have medical histories.
Wait. Maybe that wasn’t the killer he was after. Maybe that was some other wacko who happened to be out tonight. Yes. That must be it. “But why did he think he knew me?” Isaac asked himself miserably. Oh lord. What was he going to do?
Calling the police seemed more impossible than ever. There was no body. No evidence. And the men that he had encountered after the fact, if they could be identified and questioned at all, would only relate the story of a babbling old boozer stumbling around after phantoms in the dark.
His thoughts blurred into a frantic helplessness until he finally succumbed to another restless sleep.
By noon the next day he felt only slightly better. The knot of anxiety in his gut refused to loosen. This was due to the fact that he had decided to take one more step in this gruesome dance.
His research had been proven valid. The next murder would take place in St. Louis. He would go there and wait again. But this time he would be more careful, and in no way confront the situation. If the killer hadn’t been scared off, Isaac intended to somehow entice a witness to the scene and let that person be the one to inform the authorities.
It was absurd, he knew. But by now none of it could claim the realm of sanity. And deep down he had to confess to something more than a passing interest. His subconscious had made some sort of connection between the horror this man was wreaking upon the homeless and the horror his wife had suffered at the brutal hands of the Nazis.
He was very involved with this thing now, and he would have to see it through to the end. That incessant question kept echoing in his head, “Where have we met, old man?” How could he possibly have remembered Isaac from Atlanta? It was so dark that they hadn’t even gotten a good look at each other…
Chapter Eight
He could not have said how he knew it, but as his plane cruised towards St. Louis, he was aware that a turning point was at hand. Something was going to happen there that would bring this matter out into the light.
When he arrived, he gathered the information he would need to become a vagrant for the night. There was an old warehouse section along the river that the city’s homeless called home. The abandoned buildings offered shelter from the inclement weather. And the police were a little more tolerant of them if they kept to this part of town. This is where Isaac would go.
He contemplated buying a gun. But the very notion only served to remind him of how far in over his head he already was. The idea that he would be able to, first, discern the true threat from the host of homeless wanderers, and then to muster the intellectual commitment necessary to take someone out of this world for good…not to mention the terrible responsibility of becoming someone else’s judge, jury and executioner? No. He was trying very hard to keep everything in some sort of workable perspective. Introducing a loaded weapon into the proceedings would tilt the mindset dramatically, from objectivity to an almost passive-aggressive state in which everyone he would encounter would be an existential threat.
In his rationale, this was a kind of experiment, really…another project for a future article. It was still just beyond his comprehension that there was a blood-d
rinking killer stalking these southern cities…and one who seemed to know him. No, no. Keep the mind balanced. Let it deal with things familiar, focus on the ordinary aspects of it all. Just a little research, a little homework, a little silver crucifix in the trouser pocket, just in case…
He spent the next four days in his hotel room, reading, drinking good wine, and preparing himself as best he could psychologically. More than a little prayer, and Mass on Sunday. Monday night found him dressed in his third-hand attire, standing on another dimly lit and littered street outside a warehouse that could not remember the last days of its usefulness. His taxi roared off with instructions to return in two hours.
He wandered through several vast, high-ceilinged rooms, cathedral-like in the sooty darkness. His flashlight was clutched in his hand, but his eyes had adjusted and he wouldn’t use it unless circumstances dictated. It was nearly ten p.m., and many of the people he had seen were reclined or sleeping. But these buildings were so big, and spread out over such an area, that he felt entirely alone.
There wasn’t any plan to his movements. How could there be? Instead, he allowed his instincts to guide him once again. They had proven themselves in Biloxi. And maybe in Atlanta? There was another in a line of eerie thoughts. Had he somehow been drawn to Piedmont Park that night?
Had Lessa whispered into his subconscious that he should uncharacteristically leave the luxury of his hotel suite and take a random nocturnal stroll among Atlanta’s economic refugees? The thought was enough to make his head spin, but it was certainly a valid idea in light of everything that had occurred since. And he was incapable of abandoning it. This was all beginning to feel a little too predestined.
After nearly two hours of wandering and waiting, he gave up and returned to his hotel.
He repeated the scenario for the next three nights. Some of the locals had begun to regard him suspiciously. But in the end he was just another old man with insomnia. Restless with wasted time. Most of them could identify with that.
On the fourth night, he poked among the empty buildings on the easternmost edge of the warehouse complex. He had come to a point of ending and peered into the inky depths of an old river shed. He was even more anxious than usual. But each time he had started to leave, something equally anxious had stopped him from doing so.
He held a mental conversation with Lessa, attempting to bolster his fading resolve. For some reason, Lessa’s side of the conversation encouraged him to pursue this, and he wondered aloud why that would be the case. Why on Earth would he assume her position to be that one? Why wouldn’t she usher him hastily back to the comfort of his Boston home? He could almost hear her soft, certain words.
“There is no ‘safety,’ Isaac. Life is the most dangerous thing one can participate in. But you must trust in something beyond yourself if you would be free. And that ‘something’ is the greatest power in the universe. Love, my darling. Love…”
Isaac was deeply absorbed in this line of thought when a finger tapped him lightly on the shoulder. He whirled and hit the light switch in one motion. The beam probed at the vacant darkness. He whirled again, stabbing with the light, willing it to discover the source of his sudden terror. A phantom voice ran up the notches of his spine…“You are looking in the wrong place.”
Now he turned again, this time with an infinite slowness, back to the building’s interior. He was there, right in front of him. “Oh, God,” Isaac gasped audibly. The man’s lips were curled in a kind of smile, but his eyes were stone.
Before Isaac could draw another breath, the stranger placed the long nail of his right index finger onto the back of his own tongue and drew it sharply forward, leaving a crimson wake. Without pausing, he grabbed Isaac by the left wrist and inserted his bloody nail into the vein on the back of Isaac’s hand. There was no pain. There was, however, a sensation of luxurious surrender. Decades of worry and desire vanished like a sigh on the wind.
The man reached into Isaac’s breast pocket and removed his wallet, glancing quickly at the driver’s license. “There isn’t enough light,” Isaac thought. “I can barely see his face…” But the man spoke calmly and in perfect control.
“Hear me well, Isaac Bloom. From this moment forward, you are mine. Your very thoughts will be revealed to me if I should inquire of them. You will obey me completely and without question. I tell you these things for your own information because in all other respects you will function as usual. I will determine your fate, but it won’t be tonight. There are too many questions to consider. Arrangements will be made for you to fly to New Orleans on tomorrow’s afternoon flight. When you arrive, you will check in to the Crescent Esplanade Hotel. At ten p.m. you will go, on foot, to the Blue Note bar on Conti St., and you will wait for me there. Now, go and find the taxi that has awaited you these past four nights, and return to your hotel.”
Isaac stood and watched the man disappear back into the shadows. He walked the five blocks to his rendezvous point and waited for his ride. When the cab pulled to the curb, the driver turned and studied the old man closely.
“If you don’t mind my asking, mister, what have you been doing out there for the last couple of hours?”
“Just a little research project on the homeless.” Isaac brushed the question aside, already aware of his inability to mention the stranger in any manner.
“Well, Pops, I don’t know if this is a compliment or an insult, but you sure are dressed for the part. You’re natural. Hey! Did you know that you’re bleeding?”
Isaac peered down at his hand for the first time. The blood had now clotted, but had left a dried trail that passed beneath his wedding band and ended at the tip of his finger.
“It’s just a scratch,” he responded automatically. “The hotel, please.”
Back in his room, Isaac sat upright on the edge of the bed. His thoughts were entirely lucid. But, try as he might, he could not will himself to ask for help. At one point he had reached for the phone to call the police. As soon as he started to speak, however, he could hear his blood, his essence, singing out against it. It was the oddest sensation, to be able to think rationally, to know what needed to be done. But when he tried to rouse himself to action, he lost all concern. He was not afraid. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he was not afraid. But he was well aware that he was in grave danger.
At four o’clock the next day he boarded the plane for a return trip to New Orleans.
Chapter Nine
Isaac checked into the hotel as commanded. Definitely off the Quarter’s beaten path, it was a common affair that would have been given two very reluctant stars in Europe. He carried his own luggage up three flights of stairs. Roaches scurried for cover when he opened the door, but there wasn’t much. A stained and threadbare rug, two risky chairs bristling with springs, and a bed that sagged so badly he could have bathed in the middle of it. These were his forlorn welcome to his new (and final?) home. He had asked the desk man what his arrangements were, and how long he was paid up for. He was given a curious expression and a mumbled message that, if deciphered, would have been, “You pay by the night, fool.”
At nine-fifteen he showered, dressed casually, and headed out for the Blue Note. Upon his arrival, he found that he was capable of ordering a brandy, and almost anything else that didn’t threaten his new-found acquaintance. Then he sat back to wait.
The bar was poorly attended. There was no music, even though the jukebox near his table screamed with neon-promises of three for a dollar. A few strains of Bourbon Street jazz would occasionally poke their heads in out of curiosity, but quickly departed, leaving a monotonous silence.
He had consumed half a tumbler of brandy when he began to notice something else unusual about his thoughts. His recollections, to be precise, were much more vivid and detailed than they had been even recently. There was a sharp sense of “nowness” to them. He had been thinking of Lessa almost exclusively since arriving
. It had been like stepping into the past.
He didn’t know when the stranger would arrive. But he felt compelled to test this phenomenon of fresh-memory even further. He closed his eyes and conjured his most poignant moment with his wife. He could feel it rushing towards him…just as he had then. He could hear the steel rails singing the dirge of the death car beneath them. The long, mournful whistle, passing sadly from box to box, from heart to breaking heart. This was the ride to Auschwitz. These were his last hours with Lessa.
The Nazis had rounded them up in the very early hours, allowing them one suitcase of their most valued possessions. Lessa insisted on leaving everything behind. “Let’s travel light,” she had smiled and squeezed his hand even as they were shoved onto the trucks.
It was another “relocation.” A safer place where they could work and live in peace until the tensions had subsided. A pleasant camp in the country. Everyone, by now, had heard the gamut of dark rumors. But, as there was no choice in boarding the trains, many chose to cling to the lies rather than slip from the secure arms of sanity. There would be time for madness later.
Except for Isaac. He was embracing his madness now. With each passing moment, with each foot of the rails that the train devoured, he slipped farther away from his wife.
She held him in the darkness, trying to absorb his anguish. But the wailing and the tears around them were no comfort to the comfortless. Lessa pulled him into a crowded corner and pleaded with him to be strong.
“Dear God, Isaac. Please speak to me. Please, hold me.”
But his eyes were vacant. He had pulled the plug on his thoughts and feelings. It was his only defense from what was happening right now. They sank to the floor together, and the train rocked them like children in a cradle. Isaac broke down and wept into the folds of her dress as remorse gnawed hungrily at his heart.
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