House Haunted (20 page)

He coldly realized that the effect was not going away. Something moved in the room.

He pushed himself up on his elbows and blinked furiously at the closet. Green flash, sight at the edge (a figure dashing out of the closet at him?) and then blackness.

“Jesus.”

There was commotion around the closet—scratching, something tapping on wood.

“Get away! Keep away from me!”

Something jumped onto the bed.

Brennan flinched. He felt the brush of fur against his side. He strained his eyes to see.

“Get away!” He swatted at the thing as it moved against him.

His hand struck something solid, covered in fur. It hissed, falling from the bed.

“Get—!”

“What is all this now?” a voice said. Brennan strained his eyes at the bedroom door. Fighting the edges of his vision, he saw a shape.

“What's going on here,” the shape said. “Did he hurt you, Muffin?”

“Who is it?” Brennan shouted.

“Dr. Brennan, are you all right?”

With relief, Brennan recognized the voice: the landlord, Beauvaque. “I . . .” He waved his hands before him. “I can't see.”

“My Lord,” Beauvaque said. Brennan tried to blink sight into his eyes (green flash, total blackness now; the green flash fading to black). He felt the weight of Beauvaque sitting on the bed; felt Muffin, the cat that was with him, move against his side, purring . . .

Fighting panic, Brennan said, “My retinas may have been burned out.”

“Let's have a look,” Beauvaque said.

Brennan acquiesced. Soft hands pressed lightly around his eyes, holding them gently open. He could feel the other man staring closely into his own eyes.

“I can't see anything wrong with them.”

Beauvaque took his fingers from Brennan's face. Brennan stiffened as the other man squeezed his shoulder.

“Listen to me, Dr. Brennan. I used to be a nurse, in a real hospital. I'll take care of you.”

Brennan sensed embarrassment.

“No touchy-feely, if that's what you're worried about, sugar. I'm not like that.” Beauvaque snorted. “Come on, let's get you up.”

With Beauvaque supporting him, Brennan got to his feet. He began to walk. He felt like he had been reborn in a world without light.

“We're coming to the door, Dr. Brennan.”

He felt himself walk through the bedroom door.

Brennan felt himself leave the apartment, felt the rub of Muffin against his leg.

“My equipment,” he protested, turning to look blindly back into the apartment.

“I'll get it later,” Beauvaque said.

They stopped, and Brennan heard the landlord rattling keys, closing and locking the apartment door. “Right now let's worry about your eyes.”

Brennan leaned on the other man for a moment as they stepped onto the elevator and quickly pulled back. He felt very tired and upset.

“Dr. Brennan, you're shivering!” Beauvaque said.

Suddenly, Brennan didn't mind the other man's closeness. He leaned into Beauvaque, and Beauvaque put his arm around Brennan's shoulder and held him.

“Poor boy,” Beauvaque said, opening the door to his apartment.

In Beauvaque's bedroom, in the midst of the odor of cat and strong perfume under an army of quilts and blankets, Ted Brennan fell asleep sightless, shivering, with terrible fear and hope in his head.

The woman with hair on her chin came for him at seven o'clock. She usually came for him at eight. He was still curled asleep on his hard bed, face toward the damp wall, arm thrown over his face. He was dreaming about a turtle, a marvelous slow turtle, a dark clean shade of brown, with green mottles within its shell sections. It was as beautiful as painted ceramic, and its leathery legs, fresh from the water, were as clean as the rest of it. There was a spot of bright orange behind its wizened head; its eyes were like two tiny dark smooth pebbles. It blinked a dinosaur blink and moved from beach to a clean cut of green grass.

The turtle pulled into itself, becoming only a perfect piece of pottery. Jan started and blinked open his eyes. He saw white light against the walls instead of accustomed darkness.

He lifted his arm away from his face and turned his head over, yawning awake, to find the face of the woman with hair on her chin inches from his own.

She smiled at his surprise. He waited for her to lift her head away, but instead she lowered it, twisting her mouth sideways and opening it like a little animal and putting her mouth over his.

He jerked his head back, meeting the solid dampness of the wall behind him. She lifted her mouth slightly from his and said, “Don't.”

He lay back and let her continue to kiss him. Her kiss was like dry paper. He thought of the remains of fallen leaves after their burning. Her eyes were open, looking into his. They were beautiful eyes, round, limpid, a shade between amber and chocolate. He found himself responding until she adjusted her mouth against his and he felt the curl of her chin - hairs against his cheek. He suddenly wanted to vomit. But again she sensed his feelings. Once more she lifted her face from his and said, “Don't.”

This time she smiled, sly, secret, her Mona Lisa smile, and stood up. He saw her almost as shadow in front of the overhead light. She stood up straight and lifted her cream work smock up over her head like a dress. She stood taut for a moment, relishing her own tenseness. He could sense her using the cold of the room, bathing herself in it. She wore nothing beneath. Jan was momentarily thankful that at least she was a woman, of which he had never been positive. During the brief time when her dress had been hiked up over her head, when he could only see her body, he became instantly aroused. Something told him that this was some-thing he had better use, and by the time she had tossed her smock away he had lidded his eyes, not looking directly at her face. He knew that if he saw or thought of those chin hairs again he would vomit. He knew what kinds of horrors might follow such an episode.

She kept her taut ballet stance for an instant (her under-arms were shaved—why in God's name didn't she excise the hair from her chin!), then quietly, almost sweetly, she said, “Remove your clothes.”

Averting his eyes from her face, he removed his pants and pulled his prison top over his head and tossed it to the floor.

“Good.” In a lithe ballet-like movement she straddled and mounted him on the bed.

It was over in a moment. Holding him within her, she arched once and stayed there, straining every muscle in her body. Jan could hear her grunt with effort. Then there was a quick movement within her, and she had pulled from him what he had, nearly before he knew it. It was as if she had been a vacuum cleaner. Then she was off him, stretching, touching her toes, climbing quickly and efficiently back into her dress.

Without looking at him, she left the room.

She returned at eight o'clock. There was no change in her ordinary demeanor. It might have been her ghostly twin he had coupled with. They made their rounds of the corridors, as always ending eventually at the two doors.

“I'll choose for you today, Jan.” She smiled, her secret smile. “Right.”

The door opened, showing him the large attendant with the tight curls, the antiseptically white room.

“Pain,” she said.

They strapped him onto the gurney, and there was pain.

When she took him back to his room, when he was crying, she whispered into his ear, delicately holding it between her thumb and forefinger, “Later.”

And he saw what she meant, because she lifted the hem of her gown, showing him the long dried track of his seed on the inside of her thigh.

When she left him alone, he did vomit. There was only a bedpan in his room to contain it, and he barely pulled it out in time, noting with disgust that it had not been emptied while he was out. He heaved everything out of his stomach. It felt as though he was expunging everything he had ever eaten. He thought of the last meal his mother had made him, the cracked pot of oatmeal the police had left on the floor, and his retching became uncontrollable. He felt he might pull up his own guts and spit them out, his own soul, along with everything else in the bedpan.

He began to gasp; he could not gain his breath. His retching continued. But he was not breathing, only throwing little gasps of undigested food out of his mouth. He clutched his stomach and rolled onto the floor. He could not breathe. Ragged, convulsive heavings were coming out of him. He thought he might die. And then suddenly that was fine with him, because what was there but death, now that this creature, this vampire, had decided to victimize him. He had never had a woman, and now he had this. He had seen the full, mirrored look of satisfaction she had worn while sucking his seed from him. He had not given it. There had not been even a glimmer of mutuality. She had taken it, and would continue to take it

Even through his gasping agony, he could hear the screams of the other inmates. There was one less scream tonight—the shrill, high keen of the very young man was gone. That explained it: she had killed him with her cold self-passion, or the pain had killed him, or he had succeeded in killing himself, and now Jan was hers. If he died, so be it; the pain, or the chin-haired vampire would get him eventually anyway. Let death come to him now.

He heard himself fighting for breath from a very long way off. A dark curtain, a velvet buffer, began to descend on him, and he heard another sound, a peaceful sighing, a giving way of self, that also came from him. He began to see himself sleeping, putting his hands under his head like a babe and sleeping.

Someone called, “Jan?”

“No!” he shouted through his dropping sleep, fearing it was the vampire's voice.

“Jan! It's me! Bridget!”

Her voice was so pure, so beautiful, more beautiful even than his acquiring sleep, that he rose on his hands, pushed himself up on his unfolding hands, and listened to her. “Jan!” There was urgency in her voice as well as beauty. “Yes?” he answered, not knowing if she could hear him. “Jan! You can't go away!”

He loved Bridget, but he was nearing the other place and rest and sleep would be so good ...

“Jan! YOU MUST NOT DIE!”

“I must . . .” he said.

“No! I'll get you out! I'll get you out of that terrible place!”

He felt her reaching for him, pulling him back.

Her voice mixed with the sound of his own coughing breath.

“Yes, Jan! Yes!”

His lungs filled full with air. He choked it out and began to breathe.

He opened his eyes, gagged, threw himself away from the mass of putrefaction in the bedpan.

He heard her say his name distinctly, softly.

She sat angelic on his bed. She wore the dress she had worn at the inn in Kolno. He trembled, remembering her touch. Her red hair shone like a halo; the freckles on her skin stood out in beautiful translucence, tiny petals floating on milk. She looked pensive, disappointed.

“Jan, what did you almost do?” she said. She shuddered, her tiny body a single tremble.

“I . . . I'm sorry.”

“Didn't you believe me?” When she looked up at him, her eyes were filled with tears.

“That . . . vampire took me! I wanted you to be the first, the only. . .”

He looked at her again; silent tracks of tears marked her face, and then, in an instant, she seemed to collapse into herself, becoming as small as a girl, weeping into her hands.

“Oh, Jan, Jan, I want you so badly, the thought that you would go away from me. . .”

Jan reached out, desperate to touch her. But his fingers moved right through her.

“I'm sorry,” he said. He sat on the bed beside her and put his hands in his lap. “I'm so sorry.” Suddenly he put his fists to the side of his head and squeezed. “God, I'm so confused!”

“Jan, I love you so much. If only you'll listen to me.” She had stopped crying. Her eyes were large, puffy with tears. Her hair looked like spun red silk; framing her face, on the sides, where her tears had wet it, it glistened. Her hands had drying tears on them. Her face shone with a radiance Jan had only seen upon the moon at certain times, in its fullness, when it seemed, not dry dirt and blasted craters, but the shimmering face of Eve.

“Jan,” she said, in a small voice, but she was looking directly at him, the blue eyes of the angel lighting into him like lamps. He shuddered when she put her own hand over his and he felt the soft, tear-wet flesh of it. “Do you love me?”

Tears leapt into his eyes. “You're the only thing that matters. The only thing in my life. I want to be with you always.”

She held his hand over her breast, moving it down slightly so that he felt the swell and the rising hardness of her nipple. She smiled shyly and raised her other hand, putting a finger to her lips. “Then listen to me. I'm going to bring you to me. You're going to leave this place and come to me and be with me forever.”

When the woman with hair on her chin came for him again in the afternoon, Jan was waiting for her at the door. He smiled at her meekly, and she returned his smile, briefly, chillingly, knowingly. She closed the door and turned to Jan.