Poppy Z. Brite - 1992 - Lost Souls (16 page)

 
          
Nothing
took out his Dylan Thomas book, but there was no light to read by. He looked at
his hands in his lap. Two weeks ago he’d put on some of Laine’s black nail
polish, but most of it was gone now. He examined the chips and flecks that were
left.

 
          
They
looked like shapes on a map, like tiny states. Maybe like the places
be
was going.

 
          
He
cupped his hands over his face. ‘They were scented with vodka and smoke, with
Laine and Sioux. He felt his eyes closing.

 
          
The
old man’s bawling voice woke him a few minutes later. “Coach boarding for
Silver Spring Fairfax,
Wash’ton
DC, Fredericksburg …”
Nothing felt for his backpack and stood up.

 
          
Now
he could get started.

 
          
The
bus smelled of cigarettes and prickly upholstery and some heavy sweet
disinfectant.

 
          
Nothing
decided he liked the odor. A few heads lifted to stare blearily at him, then
drooped back against the dark windows. He took a seat in the back and lit a
cigarette. The bus shuddered, heaved a sigh, and pulled away from the station.

 
          
Nothing
smiled at himself in the window. He was on his way. His journey had begun, lie
was already a little closer to home.

 
          
Several
hours after Nothing climbed the steps of a Greyhound bus in Maryland, Christian
opened his eyes and saw dawn bleeding palely across the New Orleans sky. At
first he could not remember why he was lying on the riverbank, why his clothes
were wet with mist and his limbs so stiff and cold. He could not think why it
seemed strange to see another dawn, why he had never expected to open his eyes
again, Then the whole night came rushing back, and he gave an involuntary
shudder and let the relief and the fury wash over him. Relief because he had
not wanted to die at the hands of one like Wallace, so clumsy and drained of
passion; fury because Wallace should not have been able to defeat him, Wallace
with his tired, ancient eyes. Christian’s belly should be warm and heavy with
Wallace’s blood now; Wallace should be drifting away along the river bottom,
the water filling his eyes, the creatures of the mud beginning to nibble at his
hands.

 
          
Christian
sat up and examined himself. There was a scorched hole in the fine black cloth
of his shirt, its edges perfectly round. He undid the top two buttons. The
bullet had shattered the third one. In the center of his chest was a shiny pink
sear, the skin pulled tight and slightly rippled. There would be no matching
scar on his back; Wallace’s bullet was still in him, and there it would stay.
It was not the first.

 
          
He
had bled only a little. There was a crust of dried blood on his skin, ringing
the scar, and the ground where he had lain all night was stained dark red. But
the spot was small, hardly worth noticing. The fool, he thought with a touch of
incredulity. He had to destroy my brain or my heart, and he had his chance at
either one, and the old fool missed my heart by an inch. With an intensity that
he had not thought himself still capable of, Christian wished that Molochai,
Twig, and Zillah had been there. They would have taken Wallace’s silver cross
away, thrown it in the river, and ripped Wallace’s throat out, joking all the
while.

 
          
But
the fury faded even as he recognized it, and Christian sat quietly in the
breaking light for several minutes, resting his head on his drawn-up knees,
unable to identify his new emotion.

 
          
As
he pushed himself to his feet and gathered his cloak around him, he realized
what this was, his reaction to waking healed and alive and still alone.

 
          
It
was disappointment.

 
          
Last
night’s trash lay tranquil in the gutter as he made his way home. The toe of
his boot connected with a plastic Hurricane glass and sent it skittering across
the pavement. The noise was too loud in this early-morning calm. Christian
caught the odor of the sticky drops left in the bottom of the glass: rum and
passion fruit gone sour, a rancid pink smell. The glass rolled into the arch of
a courtyard where green and golden light was beginning to filter down through
mimosa branches. The smell of the blossoms reached him, rosy-delicate, clear as
the smell of water.

 
          
The
Quarter was nearly quiet Christian trailed his hand along the walls, along
wrought-iron gates between high ornate pillars of brick and stone, along the
doors and windows of the dark shops, the sleeping bars. He passed an all-night
diner and caught a stew of breakfast odors: the savory, greasy smell of sausage
and eggs and coffee for those on their way to early-morning jobs, hot fried
oysters and the sliced ham and vinegar tang of
po
-boys
fur those who had been out drinking all night, who would soon head back to
cheap hotel rooms and drab boardinghouses fur sodden daytime slumber. He felt
his stomach shift, last night’s nausea raise its head, roll over, and settle
back into uneasy sleep.

 
          
The
sky was brightening more quickly now. As he turned east from Bienville onto
Chartres, the nascent sunlight caught him full in the face. Again came pain
that burned through his eyes and seared his brain. Christian flung up his arm
and sagged back against the wall. The bricks were rough and cool. He pressed
his face to them, resting for a moment. His eyes felt scorched. When he had to
venture out into sunlight, he always wore dark glasses, a wide-brimmed black
hat, gloves, and dark loose clothing that he could huddle into. This morning he
had only the cloak to pull around him. Already he was beginning to be blinded
by the new day, and he was so very tired. The sidewalk seemed to stretch
endlessly before him, shimmering and baking in the sunlight.

 
          
Surely
his bar was just ahead. He groped along the wall. He had to rely on his sense
of smell, but the
melange
of odors confused him; he
could not tell where he was.

 
          
Was
the bar in this block, or the next? He couldn’t have crossed Conti yet. Idiot,
he told himself. How long have you lived here? How many nights have you walked
this street?

 
          
You
should carry a map of scents in your head, in your very being….

 
          
He
forced himself to concentrate on separating the smells and identifying them.

 
          
Here
was the slimy sea-smell of the trashcans behind an oyster bar. Here was a sewer
smell, brown and gassy. Here was the leather trade shop, black tanned hides and
chrome and the dizzying chemical bite of butyl nitrate, and that meant his bar
was only a few doors down.

 
          
He
felt his way to it and let himself in. There was a separate street entrance
that led straight up to the rooms, but Christian usually came in through the
bar because that way he knew he would meet no one on the stairs. For a long
time he stood in the lightening gloom of the bar, breathing the dark dust, the
ghosts of liquor and beer and all the drinkers who had been here. If he
breathed in deeply enough, he thought he could still catch the scent of Wallace
Creech the dry sick smell.

 
          
Wallace.
Poor Wallace, who thought he had killed his nemesis, his daughter’s
supernatural defiler. What would he do when he discovered otherwise?

 
          
Christian
closed his eyes. He would not think about Wallace now, would not plan.

 
          
He
looked around the room, saw the dark wood of the bar, the bottles gleaming
softly on their shelves, the colored light faltering through the unbroken
stained-glass window. In here the light could not hurt him.

 
          
But
his eyes were sore, exhausted. He climbed the stairs to his room and burrowed
into bed, into his own comforting, familiar smell. Cool dry skin and ancient
spice and a hint of something darker, something thick and garnet-colored and
faintly rotten. The smell from deep inside him, where the blood never quite
washed clean. Borne away on the river of it, he slept.

 
          
When
he awoke, the light seeping around the edges of the window shade was diffuse,
milky, no longer bright and searing. Outside on the street, twilight must be
drawing nigh. The streetlamps would blink on soon, softly illuminating each
corner through opaque glass panes, and all the children of the French Quarter
would come out to play.

 
          
Christian
lay flat on his back, tangled in sheets that were not so very much paler than
his skin. He pulled tendrils of his hair over his shoulder and twisted them as
he daydreamed, and he stared at the delicate brown and cream pattern of water
marks that had spread across the ceiling over the years, almost too dim to see
in this fading light.

 
          
He
was not planning, not worrying, not even truly thinking. He was only waiting
for full night to come, for he knew it was time to leave again.

 
          
This
had happened so many times before. He might live in a place for five years or
fifty before anyone became suspicious of him. But someone always became
suspicious, and he always moved on. It was easier than trying to hide from
them; it made him less heartsick than fighting them. When he was young he had
fought them, and he had never lost. But he always had to kill so many.
Eventually he realized that when he was not killing for lust and hunger, he
hated it.

 
          
Breaking
the fragile span of their forty or fifty or eighty years made him feel vicious
and cruel.

 
          
He
could outlast them; he could return long after they were dust and bones.

 
          
And
it was most important to remain secretive, to remain a little afraid. For even
if he killed them all, tore their throats out one by one, there were always
more.

 
          
This
was the one thing he knew Molochai, Twig, and even Zillah would never
recognize: no matter how invulnerable they thought they might be, their race
was few, and the others were many.

 
          
Once
he had been found out, they would rain down upon him. They would scream for his
blood in return for the blood he had taken, and they would have it no matter
what the cost.

 
          
Wallace
might not be so dangerous. Not by himself. He was old and alone; perhaps he
would have no friends to tell. But Wallace had God, and the godly. He belonged
to a church.

 
          
Christian
knew the eagerness of the religious to believe in evil and their lust to crush
it. To do something tangible in return for the intangible reward they spent
their lives awaiting. Wallace by himself might not be so dangerous, but his
faith could be deadly.

 
          
And
so it was time to leave again. It was easier than being on his guard all the
time, easier than slapping a hundred crucifixes out of a hundred hands, easier
than ripping into a hundred terrified faces. Let Wallace die believing he had
avenged his daughter.

 
          
Christian
packed a very small bag. There was little to pack; for a long time now
possessions had seemed fleeting and cumbersome, and his room was almost bare.
He brought his day clothes, his hat and gloves and glasses, and he brought the
money he had saved from the bar.

 
          
He
kept it in a box under the bed, but there wasn’t very much of it. No one else
would have been able to afford the rent and the upkeep—the bar was so far down
Chartres, and no one ever came in until ten—but Christian had none of the
expenses of a usual human life. He did not need food; he did not go out
drinking. His enjoyments were more exotic and carried a potentially higher
price. This money he would spend along the way, for gasoline. He could get more
money when he needed it; there was always work for a good bartender. With a
glimmer of hope, he put three bottles of Chartreuse in his bag.

 
          
There
was no telling whom he might meet on the road.

 
          
It
had begun to rain, and the street was deserted. This was cold, grimy rain, rain
that drifted down from the sky like broken
spiderwebs
and danced on the hood of Christian’s car as if possessed by some mindless
elemental joy. The golden cones of brightness beneath the streetlamps shimmered
like spirits. Rain misted up from the sidewalks and rose back toward the sky.
The clouds hung low and leaden, reflecting back the light of the French Quarter
dull purple, like light seen through thick dirty glass.