Lost Souls

by Poppy Brite

Steve knew there was more trouble ahead. More stupid shit and agony. But he could not hate Ghost, no way, nohow. He followed his best friend—maybe his only friend—through the maze of streets and alleys that led back to Arkady’s shop, and the wind that fingered their hair blew off the river, smelling of oysters and pearls, of dark mud and the bones of children.

  32

  “I’m dying,” Molochai moaned. The floor beside him was spattered with fresh blood.

  “I already died,” Twig told him. “I’m a zombie, I wanna eat your BRAINS—” He lunged at Molochai, got a mouthful of hair. Molochai began to choke. After a moment he vomited a long stream of blood, some of which soaked the front of Twig’s jacket. They collapsed across the floor.

  “Not again—”

  “I can’t help it—”

  “SHUT UP!” screeched Zillah. The room fell silent except for the sound of Molochai and Twig softly gagging. At the first onset of the sickness Zillah had collapsed in a corner, shivering madly. He would let no one near him; no one wanted to go near him.

  Nothing lay on the bed bathed in icy sweat. Long streaks of crimson marked the side of the mattress where he had vomited.

  Christian stood at the window. His back was rigid, his face drawn with disgust. The shade was pulled down. When he had tried to raise it, the others shrieked piteously at the faint light that filtered up from the gas lamps far below. At last, when the retching had subsided, he said, “Do none of you possess the sense of smell?”

  No one replied.

  “Do none of you possess the sense of taste?”

  Still no answer.

  “Because if his cancer was far enough along to make all of you this sick, Wallace Creech must have reeked like a fresh grave. Or were you so eager to make your kill—in our alley, under our window—that you paid no attention to the very things that give you power? ARE YOU ALL MAD?” Wild-eyed, Christian surveyed the room for a moment. Then, as if he knew the answer to his own question, he turned back to the window.

  Nothing’s voice wavered toward him in the darkness. “Are we gonna die?”

  Christian snorted. “No. You’re going to—how would you put it?—puke your guts out. For about twenty-four hours. Then you’ll be weak and tired for twenty-four more. Essentially, you have food poisoning. A fine way to spend your first full night in the French Quarter, no?”

  “You’re so smug,” hissed Zillah from the corner. “But what happens when you drink our poisons? Give you a double shot of Chartreuse and you’d be flat on your back just like us.”

  “Yes.” Christian permitted himself a faint cold smile. “But I would be wise enough not to drink a double shot of Chartreuse.” He remembered a time when he had not been so wise, and phantom pain shot through him. If they were hurting that badly, they deserved more sympathy. After all, he supposed they had thought they were doing him a favor.

  But Zillah didn’t want sympathy. He hauled himself up on his elbows and glared at Christian. His eyes snapped green fire, visible from across the room. “Yeah?” he whispered. “Yeah? You know what I think? I think if we have to be sick, then you should be sick too.”

  Christian hesitated, wary. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean … maybe you should have a drink, Chrissy.”

  Molochai giggled. “Have a drink, Chrissy.”

  Twig took up the chant. “Have a drink … Chrissy, have a drink …” Their voices chased each other around the room. Only Nothing was silent. He lay absolutely still against the red-streaked sheets. Christian saw the shadow of his ribs under his white skin.

  “You can’t make me,” said Christian, but cold fear trickled down his spine.

  “Twenty-four hours puking our guts out,” mused Zillah. “Then twenty-four more to recover. We could be on the road by the next night. The van’s gassed up. Twig has the keys.”

  “There’s no Chartreuse,” said Christian wildly.

  Zillah waved a languid hand. “In your bag. The closet, top shelf. Three bottles.”

  Then he leaned over, coughed, and vomited a great gob of blood. It cascaded down his chin and trailed onto the floor. When he straightened up, his face was as serene as ever. “Have a drink, Chrissy,” he said. His voice was almost casual.

  Could he live like this, with Zillah always threatening him, dangling the constant specter of loneliness over his head? Christian considered the alternative. If they left, he would lose not only them but Nothing too. His heart clenched at the thought of never seeing that fine fragile face again. His only moments of love would be those he spent with the children, matching their caresses with his own before he tore their pale throats out and stole their lives.

  Whether he could live with Zillah’s threats Christian did not know. But he knew he could not live alone again. Numbly, as if in a dream from which he hoped to wake, he moved toward the closet.

  “Don’t make me do this,” he said when he had the bottle in his hand. He spoke calmly, but it was a plea born of desperation.

  Zillah only stared at him, eyes still flaring. His breath hissed in and out through his teeth—quick, jagged, painful.

  “Have a drink, Chrissy,” he said.

  The first shot blazed green agony as it went down.

  And then Zillah made him drink another.

  And then another.

  33

  By the time they got back to Arkady’s shop, Steve was running full tilt. Ghost lost his breath trying to keep up. Cold drops of sweat flew from them, catching the light of the streetlamps. Ghost licked salt off his lips. The sweat in Steve’s hair sparkled, as if his hair were full of a million tiny diamonds.

  “Hurry up,” Steve panted as they swung into the alley. “You’ve got the key.”

  Ghost fumbled with the key Arkady had given him, aware of Steve behind him wanting to wrest it out of his hand. At last the door swung open. The shop was very cold. There was some other smell beneath the herbs and candles and incense, something dry, ready to crumble. The mummy smell, Ghost thought. That’s what they smelled like. Ghost had never seen a mummy, but his grandmother had looked at a bunch of them in a museum once. They were all in glass boxes, she told him. You couldn’t smell them, but I knew just how they would smell. Like spice kept in a jar too long. Like rags hung up to dry for a thousand years.

  Pink and black candle wax had melted onto the velvet dropcloth of the altar. Steve took the stairs three at a time, kicking aside a heap of rags that lay across the top tread. Ghost followed slowly. There was a bad feeling here, a feeling of stillness, of nothing left alive. He didn’t want to go upstairs, but he knew he had to.

  At the top of the stairs he nudged the heap of rags with the toe of his sneaker. It rolled over and gaped up at him, lips stretched tight over teeth like chips of ivory. A tiny half-dried trickle of blood seeped from the torn socket of its right eye. Arkady must have summoned the last of his strength to pull the knife out of his robe and drive it into his eye socket. Ghost had seen the knife on Arkady’s nightstand, a long, lethal-looking thing with a jewelled handle and a ten-inch tapered blade. His hands were still folded around the haft. Ghost saw the gleam of precious stones between fingers like dry kindling.

  Steve’s boot had punched a sizable hole in Arkady’s brittle rib cage. Inside the body cavity, withered organs hung like empty wineskins, grayish-brown, already coated with a fine layer of dust. How the twins must have loved Arkady, Ghost thought; how many wild nights they must have spent with him, to be able to suck him so utterly dry. How could this bundle of shrivelled tissues have lived long enough to drive a knife into its own eye?

  But the knife protruded from the socket in mute testimony. Gently, Ghost pried Arkady’s brittle fingers from the haft, drew the blade from Arkady’s eye, and tried to tuck the white robe around the desiccated little body. He closed Arkady’s withered eyelids as carefully as he could, but they still flaked away beneath his fingers.

  Then he made himself go into the bedroom.

  The light was as flat and dead as neon, thoug
h it was only the light of the moon shining through the window. Steve sat on the edge of the bed. Beside him was a hump swathed in bloody sheets. Steve’s face had gone an absolute, eerie white. Thick blood coated his hands. He raked his fingers through his hair, matting it and streaking his forehead. “She’s dead,” he said.

  “Are you sure?”

  Steve laughed the most hopeless laugh Ghost had ever heard. “Oh yeah. I’m sure. Come here and get a good look, why don’t you?” Ghost stepped closer to the bed, and Steve yanked the sheet back.

  Ann lay on her side, twisted into an attitude that was painful to look at. Her neck craned stiffly back. Her face was a grimace of pain. Crusted rivulets of blood ran from the corners of her mouth. Her hands were thrust between her outstretched legs as if she had been clawing at herself. Blood slimed her arms to the elbows like gory gloves. Most of the bandages had come unravelled, or Ann had torn them away. They lay in a sodden heap beside the bed. The sheet beneath Ann’s hips was a black nightmare of blood. She had bled so much that the sheet and the mattress could not absorb it all; the overflow pooled in the wrinkles and depressions of the bedclothes, clotting as thick and dark as jelly.

  Cupped in Ann’s hands, half-encased in a glob of gelatinous blood, Ghost saw a pale shape no larger than a red bean: the dot of an eye, the veined bubble of a skull, tiny fingers like the petals of sea anemones. He looked away.

  Four A.M. is when all my dreams die, Ann had told him. It would always be four A.M. for her now; nothing could ever get her through this last, longest night.

  “You know what?” Steve laughed again and shoved his bloody hair back. “There’s even blood on her eyeballs. How the fuck did it get on her eyeballs? What did he give her? What did we give her?” He stared wildly around the room, at the dusty walls, the cobwebbed ceiling. He met Ghost’s eyes, but there was no sign of recognition in his empty stare. A long shudder ran through him.

  Then he seemed to pull himself together. His eyes were no longer blank; they shone with the glaze of alcohol and unhealthy resolve. “I’m gonna kill them,” he said. “You found Ann. You can find where they live. And you’re gonna take me there and help me kill them all.”

  Ghost had to moisten his lips before he spoke. “I don’t want to kill anybody,” he said.

  “Yeah?” Steve grinned his humorless grin. “Then how come you’re holding that?”

  Ghost looked down at his hand. He was holding Arkady’s jewelled knife. The slender blade was dazzling in the cold neon light.

  Ghost raised his eyes back to Steve’s. Slowly he shook his head.

  “Fuck you, then!” Steve jumped up and bolted onto the landing, heading for the stairs. Ghost started to follow.

  But before he reached the door, he turned back and dug a handkerchief out of one of his pockets. Quickly, without thinking much about it, he took the head of the foetus between thumb and forefinger and extracted it from the lump of congealed blood. The back of his hand brushed Ann’s inner thigh; it was scaly with dried gore.

  The tiny skull was still warm, and for a moment the sticky skin seemed to twitch between his fingers. But that was only his hand trembling. He wrapped the foetus in his handkerchief and tucked the bundle into his pocket.

  Out on the landing, Steve snatched Arkady’s withered corpse up by the front of its robe and slammed it against the wall. The brittle cranium shattered. Dust sifted from the cavity, powdered Steve’s hands, mingled with Ann’s blood.

  “What’d you do to her?” Steve yelled into the ruined face. “What was that stuff? Drāno? Why did we trust you?”

  He kicked the body down the stairs. At the bottom it crumbled, the white robe settling over a pile of dust and splintered bones. Steve followed it.

  Ghost ran down after him and tried to grab him, but Steve was already raging through the shop. He kicked Arkady’s altar, and it crashed over, though Ashley’s skull was nowhere to be seen. He tore the beaded curtain down. Bright bits of plastic skittered across the floor. He swept rows of bottles and boxes off the shelves. Strange pungent smells wafted up from the spilt substances.

  “Fucker,” said Steve helplessly. “Goddamn shithead fucker.” He might have been speaking of God or Arkady or himself. He stood with his feet splayed and his eyes rolling wildly, looking for something else to destroy, something whose broken fragments might magically recoalesce into a whole, living Ann. He grabbed the knife from Ghost’s hand and raised it high above his head.

  Ghost saw plainly what Steve intended to do next: he was going to bring the heavy handle down on the glass case where Arkady’s bowls and jars were laid out. Several hundred pounds of shattering glass, even in a back alley of the French Quarter late at night, might attract attention. And with Ann lying in her own blood upstairs and the proprietor smashed to powder in the back room, attention was not what they wanted. “Don’t do that,” Ghost said, and caught Steve’s arm.

  Steve whirled on him. For a moment Ghost thought Steve would bring the knife down in his face. But Steve only stood poised to attack, the muscles of his arms trembling.

  “Listen,” Ghost said as calmly as he could. “It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t even Arkady’s fault. Ann made her own choice.” Bewitched, he thought, but that wouldn’t help Steve.

  Steve’s lips worked soundlessly. His eyes were red and desperate. But ever so slowly he lowered the knife. In that moment, despite the dark smears of blood on his forehead and the lines of exhaustion bracketing his mouth, Steve’s face looked younger and more vulnerable than ever. It was the face of the eleven-year-old kid Ghost had once known, wanting badly to believe what Ghost was telling him, wanting to trust Ghost but not quite able.

  At last Steve said, “You don’t think it was my fault?”

  “It was never your goddamn fault.”

  “Or Arkady’s, even? You don’t think she died because of the poison we gave her?”

  “She would’ve died no matter what, Steve. Arkady told us she couldn’t have an abortion. And the baby would have killed her. It wasn’t our fault. Not a damn thing could have helped her.”

  “The vampires did it.” Soft, but simmering with rage and pain. “Yeah. Vampires. So what if they are? Does that mean they can just roll into town, fuck up my life, then go off and party some more? I was fucking up my life just fine on my own. I didn’t need them. Ann didn’t need them. I still loved her—I would’ve—I would’ve—”

  “I know you would’ve.”

  “But now I can’t.” Steve spread his hands wide. “There’s no choice anymore. Everything I wanted, everything she ever wanted—none of it can ever happen now. And how come? Because some vampire was horny?” He hefted the knife. “No. It’s not gonna be that way. You can find them, Ghost. You can take me to their lair.

  “And I’m gonna kick some vampire ass.”

  Christian clawed the bathroom door open and felt his way back along the landing. His good night vision could not help him now, because his eyes were squeezed shut against the pain. It washed over him again, a green nausea that felt as if it were turning his guts into bloody lace, a sickness that clutched the softest core of him and squeezed.

  Twice already he had made his way to the bathroom. His fastidiousness would not allow him to vomit on the floor as the others were doing, though now he was far sicker than any of them, except possibly Nothing.

  He swore at himself. Stupid, stupid—falling for Zillah’s tricks, trying to buy their love. You can never be like them. They are young and strong and wild. To them the blood is just another path to drunken gratification. You are old, and for you the blood is life itself.

  But as the Chartreuse blazed down, he had felt as if he were drinking those eyes, Zillah’s eyes. Zillah had made him drink half the bottle. Molochai and Twig egged him on between bouts of retching. Nothing lay silent, slit-eyed, beaded with icy sweat.

  Christian pushed the door shut, stumbled across the room, and fell on the bed beside Nothing. He heard no gagging or moaning; everyone else seemed to be asleep.
The blaze of green pain lessened a little. Christian opened his eyes and studied the delicate pattern of water marks on the ceiling, following their lines, wondering if they formed maps that someone might travel. Wondering if they formed the map that had brought him and Nothing and the others here, to this city, to this room.

  Soon his eyes closed, and he slept dark dreamless sleep.

  His feet sore from all the night’s running, his heart ready to burst with Steve’s pain and his own, Ghost led Steve along Chartres Street. Steve had jammed the dagger into the waistband of his jeans. The jewelled handle protruded obscenely.

  Ghost was pretty sure he knew where Nothing and the others were staying. He didn’t have to be psychic to use the phone book, and Christian’s bar was still listed. But how do you know about the bar, the long-ago nights empty even at Mardi Gras? How do you know about the room upstairs where a girl gave birth to her own death? These were questions best asked in dreams. Ghost let his feet lead him along.

  He shouldn’t be taking Steve on this fool mission at all, putting them both in danger. He should lead him to a dead end, an empty room somewhere. Or a bar. But Steve had been put through enough bullshit tonight. Something in Ghost rebelled at lying to him. Anyway, the vampires would surely be out drinking somewhere. Steve could go upstairs and bang on the door until he saw the room was empty. Then there would be no reason to stay.

  Steve saw the boarded-up window, the shabby door with the faded sign above it that still said CHRISTIAN’S. Beside it, an unmarked door stood open; a long staircase ascended into darkness.

  “Is this it?” Steve didn’t wait for an answer; the truth was in Ghost’s eyes. He put his hand on the jewelled haft and started up.

  Halfway to the top, the darkness took on a velvety tangibility, as if Ghost might stroke it with his hand. Above him he heard Steve feeling his way up the stairs, banging his head against the walls, missing a step and stumbling when he finally reached the landing. Up here there was a little light, dim and watery, as if the moon shone in through an unseen hole in the roof.