Poppy Z. Brite - 1992 - Lost Souls (49 page)

 
          
Wallace
was already bleeding from several places. The wounds in his ankles pumped with
his heartbeat. Molochai and Twig latched onto them. Nothing imagined that the
big veins of the legs must be like soda straws.

 
          
Zillah
picked up one of Wallace’s limp hands, the one he had stomped. The palm was
smeared with blood where it had been crushed against the broken glass and rough
brick. Zillah opened his razor again. He slid it smoothly in, and the flesh of
the palm parted cleanly. A sheet of thin blood mixed with saliva ran down
Zillah’s chin as he began to suck at the wound.

 
          
Nothing’s
stomach growled.

 
          
He
crawled forward and knelt beside Wallace. His grandfather’s cheek rested on a
broken bottle. His eyes were open, still aware, brimming with rage and pain. At
least I can end the pain for you, Nothing thought. He put his mouth against the
slow pulse of Wallace’s throat. The skin there was dry and soft; it felt very
old. He choked back a sob and sank in his new filed teeth.

 
          
His
grandfather’s blood was bitter.

 
          
But
he and his family drank every drop.

 
          
Late
that night Ghost opened his eyes and blinked up at an unfamiliar ceiling.

 
          
There
were no dead leaves up there, no painted stars. There were only shifting
patches of moonlight like a white and silver sea.

 
          
For
a moment he felt the floating giddiness that always came when he woke in a
strange bed. Then, slowly, the world fell into place around him. There was the
softness of a mattress under his back, the weight of blankets. There was the
deep regular breathing of Steve beside him, and the warmth of Steve’s skin, and
Steve’s smell that had gone strange in the past couple of days. It made Ghost
wonder whether Steve’s insides had been thrown off balance somehow.

 
          
Steve
usually smelled of beer, but now, often as not, the harsh odor of whiskey was
on him instead. And dirty hair, but that was normal because Steve’s hair was
getting long and he said it was a royal pain in the ass to wash. But now
Steve’s clothes were dirty too, and there was some strange secret smell that
made Ghost lift his head and flare his nostrils, trying to scent it out, to pin
it down. It was the smell of exhaustion, the smell of frying brains, the smell
of despair.

 
          
It
might mean that Steve was only clinging to some remote edge of sanity. It might
mean Steve was about ready to say Fuck this shit, man, and give up altogether.

 
          
Steve
still loved Ann, but it was a wretched kind of love, a love that made him hate
himself for feeling it. Steve was just blaming himself now. He had reason to
blame
himself.But
Ghost knew guilt could be traced
back forever, blame could be laid every which way, and what good would it do?
Whose pain would be lessened by it? Steve had done what he had done, and
because he was Steve, he could not have done it any other way.

 
          
Steve
had always been like that: he would go through the fire, would never shy away
no matter how hellish it was. When the pain burned off him, he seemed stronger,
more pure. But sometimes it nearly killed him. And sometimes he tried to quench
it by drinking, which only made the flames burn higher and hotter.

 
          
Why
couldn’t Ann understand how Steve was? The rocker with a hundred midnights
stored in his heart for nobody to ‘find; sure, he was tough, but he d/d hurt,
and somehow you had to soothe that pain while pretending you couldn’t see it.
Ghost stared into the dark. Sometimes he thought he was the only person who
understood Steve at all. They had been together so long. But what good did that
do Steve?

 
          
He
remembered what Ann had said the day he went over to her house. The night is
the hardest time to be alive, she had told him. And four A.M. knows all my
secrets. She had wanted something, or someone, to get her through the night.

 
          
Zillah
with his green eyes had gotten her through part of one night, anyway. But what
saved her from four A.M. now? What had she thought about on those nights when
she prowled around the trailer on Violin Road, maybe knocking and not being let
in, maybe afraid even to knock? What was she thinking now, as she rode a
southbound bus, as she roamed the dark streets of the French Quarter, breathing
the mist of beer and the essence of time? Did she know yet where Zillah lived;
was she staring up at his window, whispering words he would not hear?

 
          
What
was getting her through this night? And what would get her through all the
nights yet to come, as the poison fetus grew inside her?

 
          
Ghost
sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He caught a whiff of
himself.

 
          
His
clothes were as dirty as Steve’s, though not as beer-stained; they had only the
things they’d been wearing when they took off for New Orleans. Tomorrow they
would have to go and buy a couple of fresh
Tshirts
.
Something classy, like the oyster bar shirts that said SHUCK ME, SUCK ME, EAT
ME RAW.

 
          
The
wooden floor was cold. Moonlight dappled Ghost’s feet. He stood up slowly,
easing his weight off the mattress, trying not to wake Steve. There wasn’t much
chance of Steve waking up, though. Earlier tonight Steve had declared his
intention to drink a pitcher of Dixie beer in every bar on Bourbon Street. When
they didn’t have Dixie, he settled for Bud. As far as Ghost could recall, they
had gotten about halfway before he was able to drag Steve back to the room and
dump him into bed.

 
          
Ghost
had had his share of those pitchers too. He was still swaying a little. He
steadied himself against the doorjamb and crossed the threshold into the hall.

 
          
He
and Steve had the first room at the top of the stairs. Next to that was the
room belonging to Arkady’s mysterious guests; beyond that was the bathroom,
where Ghost was headed, and at the end of the hall was Arkady’s bedroom.

 
          
As
Ghost passed the open door of the second room, he saw moonlight filtering in
through a dirty window. The cold glow spilled over the rumpled sheets and
blankets on the bed, made the floorboards gleam, threw the closet door into shadow
so that Ghost couldn’t tell whether it was open or shut. At the foot of the
bed, drooping halfway to the floor, a small twisted shape hung.

 
          
Ghost’s
breath caught in his throat. As he stared at the shape, it seemed to twitch.
Ghost took two quick steps backward. Were the occupants of this room really the
ones who had killed Ashley? Could Arkady be that perverse? Was the twisted
shape another of their victims, a child with all the life sucked out of it,
hanging
bonelessly
? Or was it some voodoo creation of
Arkady’s, some dried effigy that would come to life and jerk toward him in a
horrible parody of dance?

 
          
Ghost
stood in the doorway a moment longer, pulling his hair over his face, staring
through its pale curtain into the room. He didn’t want to know what the shape
was. He wanted to pull the door shut, go on down the hall to the bathroom, and
get back to bed. With Steve asleep beside him, he would not be afraid.

 
          
But
he had to know what was going on here, whether this was a safe place or not.

 
          
Before
he could think about it anymore, he made himself walk to the foot of the bed
and prod the shape with one finger.

 
          
A
pillow, wadded into a hard little knot. That was all it was. For a second he
was glad Steve was in the other room passed out, not here to see him getting
spooked over a pillow. Then he wished Steve were here, even though he knew
Steve would call him a pussy. Steve hadn’t been laughing at much of anything
these days. Even tonight. Usually when they went on a real bender, they would
start remembering stuff they had done when they were kids, making stupid jokes,
imitating each other. “
Fuckin
’ shit, Steve, you sure
are sucking down that
fuckin
’ brew,”

 
          
Ghost
would say, and Steve would reply imperturbably, “Yeah, but I can feel the
spirit of the beer inside me.”

 
          
But
tonight Steve had swilled his beer silently, staring into its golden depths, at
the mirror behind the bar, at the colored lights out on Bourbon Street. When he
met Ghost’s eyes, he would not hold the gaze. But before Steve looked away,
Ghost had seen stark terror in his eyes.

 
          
Ghost
picked up the pillow and smoothed it out. As he was about to toss it back onto
the bed, he saw the strands of hair clinging to the linen. He picked a few of
them off they were brittle, translucent—and held them up to the moonlight,
trying to see their color. Some of the strands were clear ruby-red. Some were
bright
bleachy
yellow.

 
          
Neither
color looked natural.

 
          
Over
to his right, the closet door creaked and swung halfway open.

 
          
Ghost
looked at it, his head lifted high, his nostrils flaring a little. The door was
tauntingly still, trying to pretend it had been halfway open all the time.
Trying to pretend a sudden gust from nowhere had swept through the room. Trying
to pretend the floor wasn’t level and it had just happened to swing open while
Ghost was standing there alone in the middle of the night.

 
          
Ghost
wasn’t fooled. He moved toward the closet and put his hand on the knob.

 
          
When
no one twisted it from the other side, he yanked the door wide open.

 
          
For
one terrible second he thought something was drifting toward him, some bright
many-armed wraith. Then he saw that the closet was haunted only by clothes,
strange, beautiful clothes of colored silk. Were they dresses? Shirts? Ghost
took a sea-green sleeve between his thumb and his forefinger, rubbing the
slippery sensuous cloth, wondering. Loose hangers kissed softly against each
other.

 
          
Who
wore these rich clothes? He pulled a swath of rose-colored silk toward him and
buried his nose in its cool depths. The cloth was saturated with the smells of
strawberry incense, of clove cigarettes, of wine, of tangy sweat.

 
          
The
smells drew him in.

 
          
And
as he breathed the heady
melange
, a voice whispered
to him from the depths of the closet: “Ghost… easy…

 
          
He
was never sure how he got out of the room and made a wrong turn down the hall.

 
          
Maybe
he meant to go racing back to his room; maybe he meant to lock himself in the
bathroom and stay there all night. He never meant to barge into Arkady’s
bedroom–that much was certain. But all at once there he was, and there was
Arkady burning a candle on his nightstand, playing with several little heaps of
colored powder on a white plate, pushing them into intricate convoluted
patterns of arrows, curlicues, lines, and crosses.

 
          
When
Ghost slammed into the room and leaned panting against the door, Arkady looked
up and smiled. All the colored powders fell back in a bright spray across the
plate. “What a lovely surprise,” said Arkady. “Well. Not precisely a surprise,
since I heard you coming down the hall. But I am ever so pleased to see you
nonetheless.”

 
          
First,
Arkady made Ghost swallow a tranquilizing powder. Ghost didn’t want it, but in
the end it was easy to make him swallow it: Arkady just slipped inside Ghost’s
mind and pushed.

 
          
Usually
he would not have tried such a thing on a sensitive as powerful as Ghost, but
the boy was terrified and exhausted. It was easy.

 
          
Then
he made Ghost tell his tale: the whole thing, vampires and all. It was more
convoluted and full of pain than Arkady could have guessed. Ghost’s hands
twitched all the way through the telling; he tugged his pale hair over his
eyes, and more than once Arkady heard a sob catch in his throat.