Poppy Z. Brite - 1992 - Lost Souls (54 page)

 
          
Steve
sat on the edge of the bed for a long time, looking at her face. She didn’t
look any different. Tired, that was all. They might have just made love. She
might be catnapping in that lovely twilight lull that happened after good sex,
waiting for him to roll over and give her one more long deep kiss.

 
          
He
bowed his head and rested his cheek against her breasts. Beneath their softness
he felt the trembling of her heart. Turn back, he thought with sudden
incoherence. Something got fucked up bad. None of this was supposed to happen.
Time, turn back!

 
          
But
time would not.

 
          
He
kissed her through the bandages, right at the V where her thighs met. Then he
stood up and walked toward the door, and only when he saw how blurred it was
did he realize his eyes were overflowing.

 
          
Steve!
Her mind shrieked.

 
          
But
he never turned around.

 
          
Arkady
lit a candle and started down the stairs. He would get a packet of dried leaves
that needed grinding; he would sift them to dust between his fingers as he sat
beside Ann’s bed. He would bring up an old fragile book that he had not looked
at in too long, and the decanter of sherry that rested beneath the altar with
Ashley.

 
          
He
would keep vigil beside the girl all night, or at least until Steve and Ghost
returned.

 
          
He
would mark her bleeding, watch her temperature, daub her forehead with ice.

 
          
He
would take good care of her.

 
          
And
he would think about the way Ghost had slighted him, rejected him, made a fool
of him. He would think about the way Steve had shown him nothing but sullenness
and discourtesy.

 
          
He
would sit beside the beautiful unconscious girl and think about these things,
pondering the power he wielded over Steve and Ghost now. He would look upon the
girl’s pale fevered face and contemplate the administration of another poison,
one for the mother instead of the child, one that would never be detected. He
knew a poison made from the spleen of a certain fish, a poison that duplicated
the structure of normal stomach acids. He would contemplate unwrapping the
bandages that Steve had tucked so carefully around her hips, would imagine
himself straightening a wire coat hanger and sliding it up inside her, as
tenderly as a lover, until the sharp end punctured her womb

 
          
….

 
          
But
no. He wielded great power over Steve and Ghost through this helpless girl, but
he must not use it. That would be allowing the vampires to triumph. He must
save her with his poisons; otherwise the vampires would have killed her as
surely as they had killed his brother Ashley. As surely as they had turned that
lovely aristocratic face to dust, dried that sweet white flesh,
shrivelled
those eyes, those eyes …

 
          
He
only hoped his concoction would work. He had told Ghost he’d developed it after
the death of Richelle, and this was true; but he had neglected to mention that
it had never been tested on anyone.

 
          
Something
wavered at the foot of the stairs. His shadow, huge and unsteady in the
flickering light of his candle. Arkady stepped on it—a trick he had learned
long ago, stepping on one’s own shadow, good for nothing but show—and ducked
under the velvet curtain into the back room of the shop. Mullein-leaf he
thought. I must bring the mullein-leaf to be crumbled, and the book and the
sherry. Drawing near the altar, he bent to retrieve the decanter—and stopped,
his dry lips hissing air, his hands frozen in their movement toward the
dropcloth
.

 
          
He
always kept Ashley’s skull beneath the altar, safe in the dark. Sometimes in
the night he would wander downstairs to speak to Ashley and stroke the smooth
ivory curve, but he always put Ashley back in his resting place. Why, then, was
the skull here on top of the altar, nestled among the relics and offerings?

 
          
Some
of the other objects had been displaced as well: the floor at the foot of the
altar was littered with dead flowers, stray coins, the powdery ash of incense
sticks.

 
          
One
of the plaster saints had toppled over, but the candles still burned, two on
either side of Ashley, dripping pink and black wax onto the altar. Arkady
reached out to touch what was left of his brother, hoping the contact might
give him an answer, or at least lessen his confusion and his fear.

 
          
The
skull was as cold as a November wind, as cold as frozen earth.

 
          
“What?”
he whispered. “What’s wrong? What’s happening?”

 
          
The
eye sockets retained their velvety tragic darkness; the teeth did not meet in
reply. But as Arkady stroked the dome of the skull, all the candles the four
upon the altar, and the one he was carrying—suddenly flickered and then burned
stronger than before. But now their flames were a bright, cold blue.

 
          
A
sure sign of evil spirits present in the room.

 
          
“Ashley?”
he whispered. “My brother? Is it you?” But that made no sense. Ashley was not
evil. Ashley would never hurt him. Arkady groped under the altar for the
sherry.

 
          
He
would need it tonight. When his fingers found the faceted glass of the
decanter, he clutched it and started for the stairs.

 
          
But
just before he was about to sweep the velvet curtain aside, he paused, then
turned and went back to get Ashley. This meant he must abandon his candle and
ascend the stairs in darkness, but Arkady would not leave his brother down here
alone with whatever spirits roamed tonight.

 
          
The
first stair tread creaked when he rested his weight upon it. With his bare toes
he felt for the edge of the next stair, tried to ease his foot onto it without
making a sound. His eyes strained against the dark. His shoulder brushed the
wall—or did the wall lean in to crush him?

 
          
Under
his feet the boards felt unpleasantly dry, almost furry. He climbed two more
stairs, three, four.

 
          
He
was halfway to the top when he heard the light footsteps coming up behind him.

 
          
The
stairs were dark, but the two faces seemed lit by an unhealthy glow from
within.

 
          
Arkady
could make out their sharp features, their drawn mouths, the tired gleam of
their eyes through the cheap sunglasses they wore. “It’s only you two,” he
said. “You gave me a turn.”

 
          
They
started up the stairs toward him.

 
          
“Look
at us, Arkady,” said one of them. His voice was only a rustle, like a voice
sifting through dried moth wings.

 
          
“We’ve
waited too long,” said the other, and his voice was like a wind that blew from
far away over a stagnant sea. “We can’t find anyone. We can’t even look in the
mirror. And we have a show to do …. ”

 
          
Arkady
kept backing up the stairs. He heard his own breath sobbing in and out of his
throat. “What do you want?”

 
          
“It’s
time, Arkady,” said the first one. He smiled, and patches of ivory skin flaked
away from his cheeks, powdering the stairs, mingling with the dust.

 
          
The
other one smiled too. His lips were caked with dry rouge, once red, now faded
to dusty orange. Even in this dim light, Arkady could see the delicate tracery
of lines that webbed the twins’ faces and disappeared beneath their sunglasses.

 
          
“We
need you,” said the first one.

 
          
“It’s
easy. You can join your brother.”

 
          
“There’s
a girl upstairs,” Arkady heard himself say. “Young, pretty. You can have her ”

 
          
The
first one shook his head in mock reproach. His ruby hair whipped his face.

 
          
“No,
Arkady. We don’t want your pretty girl, not yet anyway. Next you’ll be telling
us to go find a whore on Bourbon Street. We’re hungry. We know you. We need
you.”

 
          
“We
love you, Arkady,” said the other, smiling even more widely. One of his upper
front teeth fell out of its socket and landed with a tiny plink on the stairs.
He picked it up and fitted it back into the ragged hole in his gum, still
smiling. There was no blood, not a drop. “You see? Would you have our beauty
wither and crack as your brother’s did? You can help us, Arkady. You can feed
us. You know it’s easy.”

 
          
“Easy
…” echoed the other.

 
          
They
ascended the stairs toward him. Arkady could not run, could not move; already
his feet and his ankles felt withered, useless. He wondered how they would
feed.

 
          
Did
they have a sort of proboscis that would thrust deep into his body to search
out every last drop of life? Or would they just bury their mouths in him, rend
him with their teeth and let his life force flow into them?

 
          
Whatever
it was, Ashley had felt it too; it was the last thing Ashley had felt, apart
from a rope around his neck. The thought gave Arkady a sick sort of comfort. He
would try not to be afraid.

 
          
The
twins kept climbing toward him. Now he could see the silver sheen of their eyes
behind their sunglasses. He could see the minute cracks that glazed the surface
of their skin. He could see the thin layer of dust that coated their tongues.

 
          
When
their graceful hands were almost upon him, he uttered a low desperate cry and
hurled Ashley’s skull at them. It struck the redhead’s chest and bounced away.
As the first dry hand touched his cheek, Arkady saw the skull tumbling from
stair to stair, down into the darkness.

 
          
The
twins fed for two hours. They pressed themselves close against Arkady’s body,
and every crack and pore of their skin became a tiny mouth, a minuscule
suckhole
, questing deep into Arkady’s tissue to extract
every drop of moisture, of vitality, of whatever love might still be buried in
Arkady’s bitter heart. They stopped occasionally to stretch toward each other
and exchange long kisses oiled and flavored by the inner workings of Arkady.
Sex was only a stopgap measure for them now, a means to an end. The usual sorts
of lovemaking seemed pallid, tame. Feeding was ever so much more sensual.

 
          
Eventually
the redhead sat up and yawned. The blond stopped sucking and regarded Arkady
with mild curiosity. Arkady’s fingers were little more than bone now, but they
still scraped weakly against the wooden floor of the landing where the twins
had dragged him. The husk of his head still creaked from side to side in blind
denial; the dried leaf of his tongue still thrust from his crumbling mouth,
questing for a drop of moisture.

 
          
There
was no drop of moisture left anywhere in Arkady’s ruined body; the blond twin
knew that.

 
          
But
they always took so long to die.

 
          
It
was sort of interesting.

 
          
The
redhead glanced over his shoulder, back toward the warren of rooms down the
hall.

 
          
“Arkady
said there was a girl,” he suggested.

 
          
The
blond smirked at him. “Greedy, greedy.”

 
          
“I
don’t care…. ”