Poppy Z. Brite - 1992 - Lost Souls (38 page)

 
          
“Why,
you’re Zillah’s son,” said Christian. He had assumed they knew. But there was
silence. Absolute silence. Even Molochai and Twig were quiet.

 
          
Nothing
only stared up at Christian. The shadows beneath his eyes were suddenly deeper;
his mouth was limp, half-open. He had the look of an
illused
child, a child kept out too late.

 
          
“Oh,”
he said. That seemed to be all he could say. “
Ohhh
.”

 
          
Zillah
gently pried Nothing away from Christian. Nothing shut his eyes tight and
curled into Zillah’s arms. His head lay heavily against Zillah’s chest In an
instant he seemed to have fallen into deep shock.

 
          
Zillah
caressed him absently. “Mardi Gras?” he asked Christian. “That little girl at
your bar?”

 
          
Christian
nodded.

 
          
‘Well,”
said Zillah. He was paler than usual, but he held himself straight, and his
eyes were fiercely happy. More than that, Christian realized. Zillah’s eyes
were proud. “Well. That changes things, doesn’t it? That makes things even
better. Lovely.”

 
          
Molochai
and Twig began whispering to each other. Christian heard a smothered giggle.

 
          
The
singer had been listening to the exchange, but he was more concerned with his
friend. The girl seemed to be in a world of her own, slumped against the side
of the van, her arms wrapped around herself, her chin tucked into her chest.
The streetlight was very bright on her hair.

 
          
Christian
looked up at the moon. It hung gravid in the sky, nearly full. Its light was
strong enough to hurt his eyes, and he closed them, but still the moon shone
through. It shone down upon them all there on the sidewalk—Steve, his head in
Ghost’s lap, furious, wounded, defeated; Zillah, with his sleeping child in his
arms; Molochai and Twig, clutching each other, still whispering.

 
          
And
Ann alone. Ann alone under the moon. Some of Zillah’s seed was trickling out of
her, seeping slow and creamy down her thighs.

 
          
Some–but
not all. Inside Ann, two specks of life had glued themselves together, and deep
inside her where all was raw and red and wet, something came alive. A microdot
of meat, part human, part strange. Nothing’s half-brother, or his half-sister.

 
          
Steve
shuddered and lay still again. Ghost stroked his hair helplessly. Nothing
moaned, beginning to surface from his shock, burrowing into his father’s arms.
The moon shone down, and Christian stared back at it. And inside Ann, the
infinitesimal blob of meat stretched and began to grow.

 
          
Heavy
green night, pine branches bending low to sweep the gravel road, the dying
grass, the trash in the ditches. Snaky night, riotous with the last October
kudzu. The kudzu would be dead in another month, like a dry brown blanket
thrown over the trees and the roadsides. But now it still writhed under the
moon, succulent, shifting, green.

 
          
Green
night.

 
          
Violin
Road.

 
          
A
trailer up on cinderblocks, a silver Bel Air and a sagging black van parked in
the scrubby dirt yard, behind the trailer a tangled thicket of rosebushes that
would bear great lacy blossoms on into November. The roses had gone wild.

 
          
Nothing
knew that if he turned his head, he would be able to look through the bedroom
window and see the spiny
etchwork
of the rosebushes
against the night sky. But he didn’t really want to turn his head. Instead he
lay very still, stretched out flat on his back in Christian’s bed.

 
          
His
hands moved through Christian’s glittering black hair, stroked the long curve
of Christian’s back.

 
          
Christian
sighed and moved closer, nestling his head under Nothing’s chin, and Nothing
felt a tiny sweet flare of pain as Christian’s teeth slid a little deeper
beneath the skin of his throat.

 
          
He
knew Christian was being careful. He knew Christian wouldn’t hurt him, would
take only a taste of his blood. This was not feeding; this was lovemaking.
Weren’t Christian’s long fingers moving over him, tracing patterns on his ribs
and his thighs, seeming to worship the texture of his skin? Still, Nothing had
seen those teeth. They were beautiful; he envied them and wished he might have
been born hundreds of years ago, before the adaptations of life among humans
caught up with his race–but having to stay sober every night of his life would
he too great a price even for fangs that curved down over his lips like hooks
of ivory.

 
          
At
first the teeth had only pricked Christian’s lower lip. They lengthened
imperceptibly.

 
          
Nothing
looked into Christian’s mouth, but he could not see how it happened. They were
simply longer all of a sudden, like hooked needles, silver-white and glistening.
Nothing felt those teeth hard against his lips when Christian kissed him, and
when he drew back he tasted blood.

 
          
Christian
bit into Nothing’s throat as gently as a junkie sliding a hypo into a sore
vein, but Nothing still caught his breath and shivered at the cold exquisite
pain.

 
          
Then
Christian’s tongue was there, licking the blood away. Christian stroked him, a
different touch from Zillah’s: slower, gentler, less sure. They strained
against each other.

 
          
At
last Christian’s mouth unfastened from Nothing’s threat, and blood flowed
between them, trickling over Nothing’s chest, staining the sheets a little
more. Nothing realized he had been holding his breath. He let it out in a great
rush. What had he been afraid of? Christian wouldn’t hurt him. He was of
Christian’s kind.

 
          
Still,
he hadn’t wanted to turn his head.

 
          
“Nothing,”
moaned Christian: a breath of fading ecstasy, borne on the scent of blood. “O
Nothing. I would like to rip your throat open.”

 
          
‘Thank
you,” said Nothing. He knew this was a compliment. Then, after a moment:

 
          
‘Tell
me about Jessy again.”

 
          
Christian
sighed. “She looked like you. The same great dark eyes. The same pointed chin.
The same listening silence.”

 
          
“You,
um, you fucked her.”

 
          
A
pause, then: “Yes. Many times over a hot New Orleans summer.”

 
          
“She
was sixteen,” Nothing said thoughtfully.

 
          
“Something
like that.”

 
          
“A
year older than me.”

 
          
‘Yes”

 
          
“How
old were you?”

 
          
A
pause. ‘Three hundred and sixty-eight.”

 
          
Nothing
wanted to laugh, but he could not. The thought of all those years stored up in
the being who lay beside him, belly warm with his blood, mouth slick with his
spit … no, he could not laugh. The sheer weight of those years overwhelmed him.
He wondered how it was for Christian. Surely three hundred and sixty-eight
years of feeling could not be borne. Had Christian stopped feeling? Did he
simply look upon the world, watchful, shutting out joy to keep back the pain of
all the years?

 
          
Nothing
pressed his face into the pillow. His eyes had gone hot and wet. He kissed
Christian’s throat, his mouth. It was just a mouth again, a rather cold mouth
now, with a dark sweet taste on the tongue. Two of the top front teeth were
unusually sharp … but Christian didn’t smile much. Probably no one ever noticed
those teeth.

 
          
“Will
I live that long?” Nothing asked.

 
          
“Perhaps.
If you’re smarter than Molochai and Twig, and more cautious than Zillah.”

 
          
Christian
stroked Nothing’s head. “I can see the true color of your hair at the roots.

 
          
Golden-brown.
It was that color when you were a baby.”

 
          
“I
need a dye job.” Absently he twirled a piece of his hair, put it in his mouth.

 
          
Then
he took a deep breath and asked, “What’s it like to live such a long time?”

 
          
Christian
didn’t reply. He glanced at the window and said, “I have to leave. I’m to be at
the club at eleven.”

 
          
Nothing
wanted to hold Christian, to take away those years, to do something for him. “I
could come with you,” he said.

 
          
“Thank
you, but no. I’ll lose my job if I keep slipping you drinks. You stay here with
the others. When they wake up they’ll want to go out.” Christian stepped into a
pair of impossibly long black trousers, buttoned a black shirt up to his chin.
He turned to go. At the bedroom door he paused.

 
          
“Christian?”
said Nothing.

 
          
“I
would not wish it upon anyone,” Christian told him. He disappeared into the
dark recesses of the trailer. A moment later Nothing heard the front door
close. Then the Bel Air was grinding out of the driveway, heading down Violin
Road toward town.

 
          
Nothing
lay among the cool tangled sheets, staring at the rags of mist that drifted
past the window and obscured the rosebushes. For a while he played with his
damp pubic hair, uncurling strands of it, gently tugging at them, letting them
spring back. It wasn’t often he had a bed to himself anymore. Usually he slept
in a sweaty knot of blankets, hair, limbs. He would wake to find Molochai’s
fingers in his mouth or drooling on his pillow. Often he woke to the perverse,
sometimes scatological endearments that Zillah liked to murmur in his ear. So
he relished this bit of privacy. He lay and let his mind drift where it would.

 
          
How
old was Christian now? He calculated and came up with three hundred and
eighty-three years. Nothing’s mind tried to balk at the thought of all those
years, but he would not let it. No, he told himself. You might be that old
yourself someday, so think about it.

 
          
That
was so much time. Unless you found others of your kind, others who lived as
long, you were bound to spend a lot of that time alone. Others—he made himself
think it: humans—would just die on you. Steve and Ghost would die, and he would
still be young and roaring—but he would not think about Steve and Ghost Still,
he had Zillah, his father, his lover. And he had Molochai and Twig and
Christian. They would be there with him, alive. But there must be others of
their race who were alone. Christian had been. Maybe that was why Christian
seemed so reserved, yet so hungry for love when someone offered it. Just
because you got used to being alone didn’t mean you had to like it

 
          
Maybe
time passed differently in New Orleans. Maybe a sort of dream-time existed
there, a time that could stretch a single day or compress three hundred and
eighty-three years. In New Orleans he had been conceived by the bright sperm of
Zillah. In New Orleans Christian had made love to Jessy. His mother. That thin,
dark-haired girl of sixteen.

 
          
That
girl who had died giving bloody birth to him.

 
          
Nothing
tried to imagine that summer in the French Quarter. The endless sweltering days
above the bar. Christian’s long bony hands moving over
Jessy’s
slick breasts, her distended belly.