The Tale of the Body Thief (23 page)

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“I don’t believe you.” I reported James’s talk of the brain stem and the residual soul, as best I could. “In these near-death experiences, has a little bit of the soul remained behind?”

“Perhaps, or maybe these individuals do confront death—they actually do cross over—and yet the soul, whole and entire, is sent back. I don’t know.”

“But whatever the case, you can’t simply die by going out of your body, can you? If in the Gobi Desert, I had gone up and out of my body, I couldn’t have found the gateway, could I? It wouldn’t have been there. It opens only for the whole soul.”

“Yes. As far as I know, yes.” He paused. Then: “Why do you ask me this? Do you still dream of dying? I don’t believe it. You’re too desperately fond of being alive.”

“I’ve been dead for two centuries, David. What about ghosts? The earthbound spirits?”

“They’ve failed to find that gateway, even though it opened. Or they refused to go through. Look, we can talk about all this some night
in the future, roaming the alleyways of Rio, or wherever you like. The important thing is, you must swear to me not to deal with this sorcerer any longer, if you won’t go so far as to follow my suggestion that you put an end to him as soon as you can.”

“Why are you so afraid of him!”

“Lestat, you must understand how destructive and vicious this individual can be. You can’t give your body over to him! And that is just what you mean to do. Look, if you meant to possess a mortal body for a while, I’d be dead against it, for that is diabolical and unnatural enough! But to give your body to this madman! Ye gods, will you please come here to London? Let me talk you out of this. Don’t you owe me as much!”

“David, you investigated him before he became a member of the order, did you not? What sort of man is he … I mean how did he become this wizard of sorts?”

“He deceived us with elaborate fabrications and counterfeit records on a scale you wouldn’t believe. He loves that sort of connivance. And he’s something of a computer genius. Our real investigation took place after he’d gone.”

“So? Where did it all start?”

“Family was rich, merchant class. Lost its money before the war. Mother was a famous medium, apparently quite legitimate and dedicated, and charged a pittance for her services. Everybody in London knew her. I remember hearing of her, long before I was ever interested in that sort of thing. The Talamasca pronounced her genuine on more than one occasion, but she refused to be studied. She was a fragile creature, and very much loved her only son.”

“Raglan,” I said.

“Yes. She died of cancer. Terrible pain. Her only daughter became a seamstress, still works for a bridal shop in London. Simply exquisite work. She’s deeply grieved over the death of her troublesome brother, but relieved he’s gone. I talked to her this morning. She said her brother had been destroyed when he was quite young, by their mother’s death.”

“Understandable,” I said.

“Father worked almost all his life for Cunard shipping, spending his last years as a cabin steward in first class on the
Queen Elizabeth
2
. Very proud of his record. Great scandal and disgrace not so many years ago, when James was also hired, thanks to the influence of his
father, and promptly robbed one of the passengers of four hundred pounds in cash. Father disowned him, was reinstated by Cunard before he died. Never spoke to his son again.”

“Ah, the photograph on the ship,” I said.

“What?”

“And when you expelled him, he had wanted to sail on that very vessel back to America … first class, of course.”

“He told you that? It’s possible. I didn’t really handle the particulars myself.”

“Not important, go on. How did he get into the occult?”

“He was highly educated, spent years at Oxford, though at times he had to live like a pauper. Started dabbling in mediumship even before his mother died. Didn’t come into his own until the fifties, in Paris, where he soon acquired an enormous following, then started bilking his clients in the most crude and obvious ways imaginable, and went to jail.

“Same thing happened later in Oslo, more or less. After a series of odd jobs, including very menial work, he started some sort of a spiritualist church, swindled a widow out of her life savings, and was deported. Then Vienna, where he worked as a waiter in a first-class hotel until he became a psychic counselor to the rich within a matter of weeks. Soon a hasty departure. He barely escaped arrest. In Milan, he bilked a member of the old aristocracy out of thousands before he was discovered, and had to leave the city in the middle of the night. His next stop was Berlin, where he was arrested but talked himself out of custody, and then back to London, where he went to jail again.”

“Ups and downs,” I said, remembering his words.

“That’s always the pattern. He rises from the lowest employment to living in extravagant luxury, running up ludicrous accounts for fine clothing, motorcars, jet excursions here and there, and then it all collapses in the face of his petty crimes, treachery, and betrayal. He can’t break the cycle. It
always
brings him down.”

“So it seems.”

“Lestat, there is something positively stupid about this creature. He speaks eight languages, can invade any computer network, and possess other people’s bodies long enough to loot their wall safes—he is obsessed with wall safes, by the way, in an almost erotic fashion!—and yet he plays silly tricks on people and ends up with handcuffs on his wrists! The objects he took from our vaults were nearly impossible
for him to sell. He ended up dumping them on the black market for a pittance. He’s really something of an arch fool.”

I laughed under my breath. “The thefts are symbolic, David. This is a creature of compulsion and obsession. It’s a game. That’s why he cannot hang on to what he steals. It’s the process that counts with him, more than anything else.”

“But, Lestat, it’s an endlessly destructive game.”

“I understand, David. Thank you for this information. I’ll call you soon.”

“Wait just a minute, you can’t ring off, I won’t allow it, don’t you realize—”

“Of course I do, David.”

“Lestat, there is a saying in the world of the occult. Like attracts like. Do you know what it means?”

“What would I know about the occult, David? That’s your territory, not mine.”

“This is no time for sarcasm.”

“I’m sorry. What does it mean?”

“When a sorcerer uses his powers in a petty and selfish fashion, the magic always rebounds upon him.”

“Now you’re talking superstition.”

“I am talking a principle which is as old as magic itself.”

“He isn’t a magician, David, he’s merely a creature with certain measurable and definable psychic powers. He can possess other people. In one case of which we know, he effected an actual switch.”

“It’s the same thing! Use those powers to try to harm others and the harm comes back to oneself.”

“David, I am the extant proof that such a concept is false. Next you will explain the concept of karma to me and I will slowly drop off to sleep.”

“James is the quintessential evil sorcerer! He’s already defeated death once at the expense of another human being; he must be stopped.”

“Why didn’t you try to stop
me
, David, when you had the opportunity? I was at your mercy at Talbot Manor. You could have found some way.”

“Don’t push me away with your accusations!”

“I love you, David. I will contact you soon.” I was about to put
down the phone, when I thought of something. “David,” I said. “There’s something else I’d like to know.”

“Yes, what?” Such relief that I hadn’t hung up.

“You have these relics of ours—old possessions in your vaults.”

“Yes.” Discomfort. This was an embarrassment to him, it seemed.

“A locket,” I said, “a locket with a picture of Claudia, you have seen such a thing?”

“I believe I have,” he said. “I verified the inventory of all of those items after you first came to me. I believe there was a locket. I’m almost certain, in fact. I should have told you this, shouldn’t I, before now?”

“No. Doesn’t matter. Was it a locket on a chain, such as women wear?”

“Yes. Do you want me to look for this locket? If I find it, I shall give it to you, of course.”

“No, don’t look for it now. Perhaps sometime in the future. Good-bye, David. I’ll come to you soon.”

I hung up, and removed the small phone plug from the wall. So there had been a locket, a woman’s locket. But for whom had such a thing been made? And why did I see it in my dreams? Claudia would not have carried her own image with her in a locket. And surely I would remember it if she had. As I tried to envision it, or remember it, I was filled with a peculiar combination of sadness and dread. It seemed I was very near a dark place, a place full of actual death. And as so often happens with my memories, I heard laughter. Only it wasn’t Claudia’s laughter this time. It was mine. I had a sense of preternatural youth and endless possibility. In other words I was remembering the young vampire I’d been in the old days of the eighteenth century before time had dealt its blows.

Well, what did I care about this damned locket? Maybe I’d picked up the image from James’s brain as he pursued me. It had been for him merely a tool to ensnare me. And the fact was, I’d never even seen such a locket. He would have done better to pick some other trinket that had once belonged to me.

No, that last explanation seemed too simple. The image was too vivid. And I’d seen it in my dreams before James had made his way into my adventures. I grew angry suddenly. I had other things to consider just now, did I not? Get thee behind me, Claudia. Take your locket, please, ma chérie, and go.

F
OR
a very long time, I sat still in the shadows, conscious that the clock was ticking on the mantel, and listening to the occasional noise of traffic from the street.

I tried to consider the points David had made to me. I tried. But all I was thinking was … so James can do it, really do it. He is the white-haired man in the photograph, and he did switch with the mechanic in the hospital in London. It can be done!

Now and then I saw the locket in my mind’s eye—I saw the miniature of Claudia painted so artfully in oils. But no emotion came to me, no sorrow, no anger, no grief.

It was James upon whom my entire heart was fastened. James can do it! James isn’t lying. I can live and breathe in that body! And when the sun rises over Georgetown on that morning, I shall see it with those eyes.

I
T WAS
an hour after midnight when I reached Georgetown. A heavy snow had been falling all evening long, and the streets were filled with deep white drifts of it, clean and beautiful; and it was banked against the doors of the houses, and etching in white the fancy black iron railings and the deep window ledges here and there.

The town itself was immaculate and very charming—made up of graceful Federal-style buildings, mostly of wood, which had the clean lines of the eighteenth century, with its penchant for order and balance, though many had been built in the early decades of the nineteenth. I roamed for a long time along deserted M Street, with its many commercial establishments, and then through the silent campus of the nearby university, and then through the cheerfully lighted hillside streets.

The town house of Raglan James was a particularly fine structure, made of red brick and built right on the street. It had a pretty center doorway and a hefty brass knocker, and two cheerful flickering gas lamps. Old-fashioned solid shutters graced the windows, and there was a lovely fanlight over the door.

The windows were clean, in spite of the snow on the sills, and I could see into the bright and orderly rooms. There was a smart look
to the interior—trim white leather furnishings of extreme modern severity and obvious expense. Numerous paintings on the walls—Picasso, de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol—and intermingled with these multimillion dollar canvases, several large expensively mounted photographs of modern ships. Indeed there were several replicas of large ocean liners in glass cases in the lower hall. The floors gleamed with plastic lacquer. Small dark Oriental rugs of geometric design were everywhere, and the many ornaments gracing glass tables and inlaid teak cabinets were almost exclusively Chinese.

Meticulous, fashionable, costly, and highly individual—that was the personality of the place. It looked to me the way the dwellings of mortals always did—like a series of pristine stage sets. Quite impossible to believe I could be mortal, and belong in such a house, even for an hour or more.

Indeed, the small rooms were so polished it seemed impossible that anyone actually inhabited them at all. The kitchen was full of gleaming copper pots, and black glass-doored appliances, cabinets without visible handles to open them, and bright red ceramic plates.

In spite of the hour, James himself was nowhere to be found.

I entered the house.

A second storey held the bedroom, with a low modern bed, no more than a wooden frame with a mattress inside it, and covered with a quilt of bright geometric pattern, and numerous white pillows—as austere and elegant as all the rest. The closet was crammed with expensive garments, and so were the drawers of the Chinese bureau and another small hand-carved chest by the bed.

Other rooms lay empty, but nowhere was there evidence of neglect. I saw no computers here either. No doubt he kept these someplace else.

In one of these rooms, I concealed a great deal of money for my later use, hiding it inside the chimney of the unused fireplace.

I also concealed some money in an unused bathroom, behind a mirror on the wall.

These were simple precautions. I really couldn’t conceive of what it would be like to be human. I might feel quite helpless. Just didn’t know.

After I made these little arrangements, I went up on the roof. I could see James at the base of the hill, just turning the corner from M
Street, a load of parcels in his arms. He’d been up to thievery, no doubt, for there was no place to shop in these slow hours before dawn. I lost sight of him as he started his ascent.