The Vampire Tapestry (9 page)

The whole thing was building a crazy momentum. When Reese paused for breath, Mark cleared his throat and said, “I found out something about him today. His name is Edward Lewis Weyland and he’s a famous anthropologist.” Well, he certainly had their attention. He explained about the vampire’s identity.

“It’s a kind of kidnapping already, don’t you see? We could all get into a lot of trouble. He’s not just some crazy tramp; he’s an important professor.”

Roger began to say something resentful, but Reese cut him off. “Be patient, Roger. Mark’s young; he needs careful instruction.” Reese’s moon face looked placid, but he cracked the knuckles of his hands with a muffled crunching noise. “He thinks what we have here is merely an ordinary man, albeit one of prominence, with a freakish taste for human blood—but basically a human being like ourselves to whom the laws of human societies apply.

“However; I am here to tell both of you—and qualified to tell both of you—that what you have behind bars in there is not simply a perverted human being. I felt the aura around it, and I arced my spells to subdue its real, its supernatural, nature and render it docile.”

“He didn’t fight you because he’s hurt,” Mark blurted.

“Oh, I don’t deny that the vampire has a fleshly carapace and that that shell has been damaged. But if you could see beyond the disguise, Mark, as I can, you’d know right away that this isn’t a person at all. It’s a bloodsucking devil, and it’s subject to no laws but those of the Great One whose rites I study.”

Argument was hopeless. Mark retreated to his own room, busying himself at his desk until the two men, still talking, left. Then he stepped into the hall, intending to go fix himself some dinner. He hadn’t meant to look across into the cell, but he couldn’t help himself.

The vampire sat elbows on knees, hands clasped at his mouth as if he’d been gnawing at his knuckles. His wide gaze seemed to leap to meet Mark.

In a low, tense voice Dr. Weyland said, “Let me out.”

Face doggedly turned away, Mark shook his head, no.

“Why not?”

“Look,” Mark said. “You don’t understand. I’m just a kind of a guest here. Roger never messes around with my stuff and I don’t mess around with his.”

“Alan Reese will kill me.”

“Roger wouldn’t let anyone get hurt!” Mark was shocked. Did Dr. Weyland really misunderstand Roger so badly?

“Reese will bring a dozen or so of his followers here on May Eve. I think Roger, facing them, will be something less than brave.”

“But this is his home. He wouldn’t let them.”

“He’ll have no choice. Don’t you recognize the kind of man Reese is?”

“He’s just a weird friend of Roger’s,” Mark said uncomfortably. “Nothing terrible will happen.”

“Nothing terrible?” Dr. Weyland seemed to look into space and to speak more to himself than to Mark.

“I felt his hands on me; I saw his eyes. He’s not the first man to lust after powers he imagines me to have.”

Mark’s scalp prickled. He said rapidly, “Look, you’re forgetting—this is all Roger’s idea; he’s running things. He’s taken care of you so far, hasn’t he? I mean, Roger can be sort of inconsiderate and wild and Reese is definitely creepy, but they’re not—they’re not in a class with the person who shot you, for instance.”

Dr. Weyland frowned. “Of course not. That was a matter of poor judgment on my part and self-defense on hers—an incident of the hunt, no more.”

“It was a woman?” Mark was fascinated despite himself.

“Yes, a woman of more discernment and competence than I had thought. She acted as any intelligent prey acts. She wanted to escape me, and she succeeded.

“But this man Reese wants...to use me, to tear out my life and devour it, as men once ate the hearts of slain enemies in order to acquire their strength and skill in battle.”

Overriding the vampire’s final words, Mark said loudly, “That doesn’t make sense. I’m not going to stand here and listen to a lot of crap that doesn’t make sense.” His face felt hot. He hurried up the hall to the kitchen.

His appetite was gone. He took off Reese’s amulet and threw it into the garbage. Later when he looked for
Notes on a Vanished People,
which he had used to prove Dr. Weyland’s identity, he couldn’t find it. Reese must have taken the book.

* * *

All the next morning Mark dreaded a resumption of that upsetting conversation with Dr. Weyland. He came home by a roundabout route from school and watched TV a while in the living room, but he couldn’t put off the vampire’s feeding indefinitely.

He delivered the mugful of blood with a tool that Wesley had contrived for the purpose the last time he was here by twisting a coat hanger around the end of a detachable mop handle. Reaching between the bars with this, Mark carefully pushed the mug across the floor toward the cot.

“Lunch,” he announced in a tone he hoped would discourage conversation. Moving very slowly, Dr. Weyland leaned down and took up the mug, emptied it, and carefully set it down on the floor again. He said, “Might you bring me something to read?”

Caught off balance, Mark blinked foolishly at him. “To read?”

“Yes. To read. Books, magazines, newspapers. Printed matter. Though of course I can’t pay you for the service, since you’ve already ‘earned’ everything that I owned.”

Those three nights of storytelling had transferred the second quarter and the pocketknife into Mark’s possession. How else could he have made it unmistakably clear to Dr. Weyland that he operated on a strictly business basis?

“Now Roger pays me to look after you,” he mumbled. He went to the living room and collected whatever was on the coffee table. The horn-rimmed glasses he placed on top of the pile before pushing it all into the cell.

Dr. Weyland picked up the glasses and put them on.

God
, Mark thought suddenly,
he’s just an old guy with glasses, like Mr. Merman at school
. “The lens was cracked when they came,” he said.

He watched while the vampire, sitting with the blue blanket pulled around his shoulders, sorted through the untidy heap.
“Harper’s. The Village Voice. Women’s Wear Daily. The New Yorker. Prevention.
Does your uncle subscribe to everything published, regardless of the contents?”

“He doesn’t have time to read most of it anyway,” Mark said. “I have to do some homework now.” It was long past time to do it, in fact.

He couldn’t find his dictionary. Hesitantly he called, “How do you spell
kinesthetic
?”

“Look it up,” replied the vampire.

“Can’t find my dictionary.”

Dr. Weyland spelled out the word. Then he said, “ ‘Kinesthetic’? What are you writing?”

“An assigned paper on some mushy poem,” Mark said.

“May I see?” Dr. Weyland put aside the magazines.

With the mop handle Mark pushed in the book of poems. Dr. Weyland opened to the place marked with the flattened drinking straw. “ ‘The Land of Lost Content,’ ” he murmured. “ ‘Into my heart an air that kills from yon far country blows...’ ” Mark’s outline for the paper was tucked inside the front cover. Dr. Weyland read this swiftly and looked up with a keen glance that made Mark uncomfortable.

“Interesting,” the vampire said. “The second paragraph, under the heading ‘Kinesthetic Sense,’ where you note, ‘Poet writes about highways he went on, remembers moving muscles while going on highways...’ That must be in response to a question from the teacher?”

“Yes, about what senses the poet uses in the poem.”

“But when Housman writes of ‘an air that kills,’ I doubt he means he’s smelling the air,” Dr. Weyland said. “The deadly breeze seems to me to blow directly into Housman’s heart, bypassing his senses altogether.”

Mark fidgeted unhappily at the bars. He should have known better; there was nothing worse for schoolwork than a grownup helping you with it. He said, “Well, without smell there’s just sight and the kinesthetic sense. That’s only two senses. I need more than that. The teacher wants at least two whole pages, double-spaced.”

“I see,” said Dr. Weyland dryly. “Nevertheless, while the point about muscular memory does have some minor value, you would do better without a paragraph on the senses altogether. Then the outline would flow much more easily from the first paragraph about the fairy-tale atmosphere of the poem, through the second on its childlike simplicity, to your conclusion concerning its meaning.”

Mark remained mutinously silent.

Dr. Weyland flicked the edge of the page with his forefinger. “I see that you mean to conclude, ‘I like the poem a lot.’ But you called it a ‘mushy poem’ when you first mentioned it to me.”

“I hate this assignment!” Mark burst out. “The poem doesn’t even make sense. What’s ‘an air that kills,’

anyway, poison gas? It’s just dumb, a lot of babyish moaning around for no reason.”

“Good, you do realize that you’ve avoided the main question,” said Dr. Weyland; “what, precisely, ‘an air that kills’ might be and what it destroys in the poet. As for ‘moaning around,’ have you never had to leave behind an existence that suited you better than the one you moved on to?”

For no reason Mark felt a pressure of tears in his eyes. He turned away, angry and embarrassed.

“I have,” Dr. Weyland added meditatively. “Often.”

“That doesn’t mean a person should go around whining all the time,” Mark muttered. “Can I have that stuff back now? I have to go and type the paper up.”

“You’re not ready to,” Dr. Weyland said. “Not until you at least consider the central question.”

“I’m only in the ninth grade, you know. I’m not supposed to know everything.”

“What is the air that kills?” asked Dr. Weyland inexorably. “Why does he let it into his heart?”

“I guess it’s memory,” Mark said sullenly, “and he lets it into his heart because he’s a jerk. He’s doing it to himself—making himself miserable by thinking about his happy childhood. Only a stupid jerk walks around thinking about his childhood. Most people’s childhoods are actually pretty lousy anyhow.”

“It isn’t necessarily childhood that he means,” Dr. Weyland said, “although you make a good case for that in your outline. I think the reference is more general—to the perils of looking backward on other times and the seductiveness of memory. Well...” He fell for moment into an abstracted silence. Then he added briskly, “I think, by the way, that if you really dislike the poem you should say so—and why—in your paper.”

“I can’t,” Mark said. “This is for Carol Kelly, and she likes the crummy poem. She would.”

“Who is Carol Kelly?”

Suddenly recalling that Dr. Weyland was a teacher himself, Mark tried to brazen it out. “This is her assignment. I’m doing it for her.”

“How kind of you,” murmured Dr. Weyland, returning the book.

“She’s paying me ten dollars. It’s a business.”

“My God,” Dr. Weyland said, “a thesis mill! How old are you—fifteen?”

“Fifteen in June.”

“Fifteen and rich, no doubt. Certainly enterprising.”

“I’m not greedy,” Mark said stoutly. “It’s important to have an income of your own, that’s all. Then you don’t have to depend on other people. You should know—I bet you’re rich yourself, I bet you’ve salted away all kinds of treasure from other times.”

“Unfortunately, great wealth, like renown or exalted rank, attracts too much attention, most of it hostile,”

Dr. Weyland said. “I learned a long time ago to travel unencumbered and to depend on my wits. Now I’m not so sure. What a pity I have no diamonds about me, no purses of pirate gold. If I had, you and I could make a transaction of the kind you like, all business: my freedom for your enrichment.”

“Money wouldn’t change anything,” Mark said. “I told you, I can’t let you go.”

Dr. Weyland drew back. He said harshly, “Of course. It was a mistake to ask you for help in the first place. I won’t ask again.”

For some time Mark sat at his drawing table, biting his pencil and working over the paper again and again. He couldn’t read the poem now without thinking wretchedly of his parents.
God, Dr. Weyland would drive you crazy if you had him for a class.
He was one of those never-satisfied types who beat out your brains under the mistaken impression that they’re teaching you to think.

* * *

A kid from math class wanted to go to a movie after school. Mark begged off, saying he had chores to do. Actually, Wesley was coming today and would handle the feeding of Dr. Weyland. Mark used the time to go to a film and lecture about coyotes at the Museum of Natural History. He preferred seeing animals stuffed in the museum exhibits or on film to seeing them in a zoo. The zoo depressed him horribly. The documentary film drove him out before the program was over. It first lovingly detailed the cleverness of the coyote, his beauty and his place as part of nature, and then settled into a barrage of hideous images: poisoned coyotes, trapped coyotes, burned coyotes, and coyotes mangled by ranchers’ dogs. Mark didn’t think he would ever be cool enough to stand that kind of stuff. Wesley was still at Roger’s when Mark got in. “I cleaned up our friend special for tonight,” he said.

“Roger called and said don’t feed him. There’s company coming.”

Ugh
, maybe that meant Alan Reese. Walking Wesley out, Mark told him about Reese’s visit. Wesley kicked at the base of the brownstone steps. “Shit,” he said. “I thought Bobbie had quit running around with all those devil nuts. Didn’t Roger and her do a trip with them once before?”

“He’s getting into it again,” Mark said.

Wesley shook his head. “Tell you one thing: Alan Reese is weird. He likes stagy stuff with all kinds of blood and crazy stunts. Him and his friends did something one time that left a whole apartment in Queens splashed with rooster blood. The chick who played altar for him and his friends that night said if he ever talked to her again she’d sue.”

“Wesley, I’m sort of worried.”

“Yeah, well, it’ll be okay. Roger won’t go as far as Reese will want to. It’ll be okay.” Wesley stuck a wad of gum under the curve of the stoop and went away whistling.

Dr. Weyland sat reading, dressed in dark trousers, socks, and slippers. The cuffs of his white shirt were folded back the way Mark did his own cuffs when his arms got too long for the sleeves.