Black Light (39 page)

Now he looked scarcely older than one of my own friends, though more broad-shouldered, his hair like a winter sky, his face heavily lined. I stared at him, too tired to be embarrassed or aroused. But then it was as though my vision grew fuzzy, as though this were a film that had suddenly gone out of focus.

Because I was no longer seeing Axel Kern. It was like one of those optical illusions that would leave me fuming as I struggled to find the Young Girl in a blot of ink, when all I could see was The Crone. For a fraction of a second both figures would be there on paper, maiden and hag, and then I would have to try all over again to bring one or the other back in focus.

The same thing was happening now. In front of me Axel quivered and blurred like a flame, while behind him—or within him, or above him—something else tried to flicker into being.

But it never quite appeared. As abruptly as it had begun, the eerie haziness dispersed. Axel Kern stood gazing at the ceiling, arms raised, a circlet of leaves upon his brow. He lowered his head, until he was staring at me.

“No.” He extended one hand, fingers curled into a fist, then opened it. “Not just opium.”

In the center of his palm was a single poppy calyx, mahogany-colored, the points of its crown standing upright like so many serrated teeth. He tapped the pod, once; then ran his thumbnail down the small swollen globe. A split appeared in its flesh. Tiny droplets oozed forth, milky white, viscous. Axel gazed at the seed-head measuringly, then at me; and tossed it onto the bed. “Never just opium. Much, much more…”

He extended his hand. His gaze did not leave mine. A sea-colored line ran the length of his arm, a vein slightly raised above paper-white skin. With his other hand he traced the vein as a lover might, let one fingernail hover above the crook of the elbow. The vein throbbed like a seed about to burst. Smoothly as though it were a razor Axel slid the nail into his flesh. He drew it back, opening a seam from elbow to wrist, and stepped toward me.

“It is a kingdom,” he whispered. “It is mine.”

Along the inside of his arm white liquid welled, thick opalescent drops that grew until they spilled down to the floor in a slow steady rain. Axel stared at it, smiling, then turned and offered his arm to me.

“Drink.”

“No.” I tried to shake my head but could not move. As he drew closer I cried out. “No! Please—”

He stopped and shrugged. “As you will,” he said, and drew his palm beneath the open wound. He let the white sap fill his cupped hand, brought it to his face and drank. Then he extended his other arm, with a finger caressed pale flesh before once more dipping his nail into it. As though he were skinning a hare’s belly he slashed downward, leaving a bright tear, like a scarlet fern. I tried to cover my eyes but Axel took my wrist, pulling me to him as he murmured, “This you
will
drink—”

He pushed me to my knees and clamped his hand on the back of my neck. Red flowed from his arm, but as he pressed my face into the crook of his elbow I smelled not blood but wine and upturned earth.

“Drink,” he said, softly but urgently. When I struggled his grasp grew tighter. His hand slid upward to hold my skull. “Drink.”

I clamped my mouth shut but he jammed his arm up against it, hard enough that my teeth rattled.
“Drink—”

He continued to press his arm against my mouth, at the same time began to stroke my head. “Come now, Lit, drink, drink…”

And finally I let my lips part, and drank. Liquid spurted onto my tongue, heat like blood and the unmistakable burn of alcohol: wine. But stronger than any wine I had ever tasted, stronger than anything I had ever drunk—dark and rich as broth, so that I lapped at it greedily, warmth streaming across my cheeks and staining my shirt, drops flying as I tossed my head back and laughed, gazing up into Axel’s eyes.

“Do you remember now?” he asked.

I shook my head. It was hard to see clearly—everything looked at once too bright and misty, as though I was in a steam-filled room. With a flourish, he let go of me. I started to stand, lurched sideways, and almost fell.

“Whoa,” I said. The man laughed.

“Strong wine,” he said. I nodded, grinning. When I tried to take a step toward him I stumbled and sat down, hard, on the mattress.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. Smiling he sank down beside me.

“Now,” he whispered. He took my hand and drew it to him, brought it down until I could feel his cock. I had avoided looking at it before. Now I glanced down and quickly away again. I tried to turn but his hand tightened on mine, forcing my fingers to circle what I had glimpsed. He was bigger than any of the boys I had fucked, but not grotesquely so. Certainly he was neither ludicrous nor monstrous, like the owl-eyed creature I had seen carved upon Bolerium’s arched gate, or the horned man I had seen at Jamie’s house. Beneath my fingertips I felt his skin, smooth and velvety, the rough fringe of hair below. He withdrew his hand and I let my fingers move upward, until they reached his glans. There was a tiny bead of moisture at its tip, rose-pink. As I watched it grew larger, swelling like nectar on a honeysuckle bloom. When I bent to touch it with my tongue I tasted a bright spark of the wine I had drunk moments before. The man groaned but made no other move—no fumbling for my shirt, no tugging at my zipper; no hand sliding frantically down my stomach and beneath the waistband of my pants. I waited, my breath quickening. Still he did not move. He sat cross-legged on the mattress, a hand on each thigh, his head tipped back and eyes closed. Along the inside of each arm a bright red line was drawn. There was no trace of white sap, no supernatural wine, no blood.

I stared at him, surprised, even a little angry. Then I pulled my clothes off, thinking that might be the problem.

“Hey,” I said thickly, dropping my shirt. He seemed not to hear. I frowned, reached for one of the bottles on the floor. It was three-quarters full, the cork protruding a good inch from the top. I took the cork between my teeth and pulled it out, hefted the bottle and drank.

I drank way too much. But I drank anyway, until my mouth burned and my head buzzed, until I felt the same familiar three
A.M.
twanging in my skull that presaged those wild bursts of clarity I lived for at Deer Park with my friends, mad jangling music and ragged black light just outside my range of vision. When I tried to set the bottle down, it slid from my hand and smashed onto the floor.

“Shit,” I mumbled. “God damn it…”

I leaned over to survey the damage. I saw no broken glass, no spilled wine; just a drift of white poppies, wrinkled as tissue, and here and there one red petal like a bloody thumbprint. I blinked and turned back, feeling as though the whole room turned with me. The ivy-crowned man was still cross-legged on the bed. His eyes were open, verdant eyes shot with amber like the surface of a stream.

“Lit.”

He smiled and took my hand, pulled me close to kiss him. This time he tasted not of wine but of blood, a taste that maddened me. I tried to pull away but he wouldn’t let go. I pushed at him, pounded ineffectually with one fist, struggled and kicked and flailed: no good.

So I bit him. On the cheek—there was a metallic spate of blood in my mouth, as though my own cheek had been pierced by a needle. He moaned. I shoved him onto the mattress and he fell onto the heaped scarves, their folds rippling so that I saw the pattern that had been there all along: scarlet vines and purple leaves, glistening black figs and clusters of grapes that exploded where he touched them, so that threads of red and purple radiated like cracks around his body, a living mosaic.

“
Your
turn now,” I said drunkenly. “Drink…”

I straddled him, placed my hands on either side of his head. I kissed him, my tongue lingering on his cheek, the taste of salt and wine; rubbed my face against his until it was raw and left a smear of blood across his chin. Then I moved away, raising myself until my cunt was above his face. I lowered myself carefully, resting against his solar plexus as I inched forward, until his mouth was under me. I felt his lips, and his tongue: barely touching me at first but then harder as I moaned, his tongue tracing the edges of my labia and then flicking at my clit as I rocked back and forth. I felt wet, not just my cunt but all of me, arms and legs and breasts. I glanced down, gasping, saw my body mottled red and white and the air around me filled with blossoms. When I came it was like watching that small throbbing vein in his arm, a rhythmic pulse that finally burst, a wash of red across my eyes and petals on his tongue. I cried out and pushed myself from him, sprawling on the mattress with my hand across my eyes. I could feel him alongside me, his chest and the little hairs around his nipples, his cock nudging against my stomach.

“Take me, Lit.” I opened my eyes. He was staring at me, his expression yearning, almost desperate. “Now…”

I forced a smile. “In a minute.” I was exhausted, too drunk to think about fucking right now; almost certainly too drunk to focus on anything else. “Can’t we, uh, just rest for a—”

“No.”
He sat up, his eyes wide and staring. “Now. The harvest cannot wait, ever.”

I started to giggle, clapped my hand over my mouth. “
That’s
a new one—”

He gave me a thin smile, his green eyes feverishly bright. “Bound and scored, flailed and bled, burned and consumed,” he whispered.

“Down with the bodie and its woe,

Down with the Mistletoe;

Instead of Earth, now up-raise

The green Ivy for show.”

He raised his arms above his head, crossed them at the wrists. I watched, unsure whether to laugh or run.

“One buries children,” he recited, “one gains new children, one dies oneself; and this the race of men take heavily, carrying earth to earth. But it is necessary to harvest life like the vine, and that the one may be, the other is not. I am the son of the earth, and the stag that treads upon it; son of the earth and the starry sky.”

His voice rose, cracking like a young boy’s.

“To a terrible end I will send this young girl,

And I shall prevail and be revealed the Raving One,

And that shall prove all else to be true.

“Bind me, Lit!” he cried. “
Now
—it has begun—”

From overhead came a rustling. I looked up.

The ceiling was alive, a thrashing sea of vines and leaves, tendrils like grasping green hands and the dark filigree of exposed roots. In a writhing curtain they fell around us. I yelled, kicking at a long strand of ivy that encircled my bare leg, in a frenzy grabbed it and tried to pull it off. With a hiss like burning grass the ivy lashed itself around my wrist. I held not a vine but a snake, its triangular head set with eyes like obsidian flakes, its yellow tongue tasting the air as it tightened around me.

“God, no—”

I staggered backward and fell. The snake slid from my hand as my head banged against the edge of the platform. I felt dizzy, no longer drunk but delirious. Around me swept a coruscating tide of green and gold and black and brown, serpents and field mice, oak leaves and gnarled husks of beech-nuts, withered poppy blooms and bunches of grapes like dusty pearls. I flailed and beat my hands against them, but still they came: a yellow-and-black mat of crawling honeybees, ermines in their fuscous autumn coat, boughs thick with figs and olives and a tumult of coppery acorns: all of October’s woodland harvest, a golden flux burying me, drowning me, devouring me—

And then it was gone. I blinked and let out a shuddering breath, looked around at the room. All was as it had been, save for scattered leaves and seeds, the slithering echo of something taking refuge in a dark corner. On the bed reclined the man who had been Axel Kern. The crown of ivy still rested upon his brow, and at first I thought there were vines across his lap; but when I pulled myself up, I saw that he held several coils of rope. Coarse hempen rope, the same kind of rope used to hang terracotta masks when autumn came to Kamensic Village.

“Where—where did they go?” I asked hoarsely. “Where did they
come
from?”

“It is always here,” he said, his eyes dull. “I told you: it is my kingdom. That is why they name me
Kissos,
lord of the ivy, and
Dendrites,
the one in the tree…”

His voice died, but I heard another voice then, Balthazar Warnick’s—

…
the god of ecstasy; the god of illusions…

I stared at the man on the bed. Hatefully, feeling a new rage clawing at my chest; rage intense and raw as grief, less an emotion than another being struggling to escape from inside me.

“You did that,” I said. There was a blackness in the middle of my eyes, a darkness in my head that told me I should stop now, I was too drunk, I should run away…

But I couldn’t stop. I said, “You drugged me, like you drugged Ali—” He shook his head. I went on, my voice rising. “—you’ve made all these things happen, it’s like a—a
sickness,
like some kind of delusion. I don’t know how you do it but
you made it come
—”

I sprang at him, screaming. “You fucking bastard! You think you own this place, you think you own everything in Kamensic—but you don’t own me!
I am not your fucking kingdom!”

He raised one arm above his face but I smacked it aside. I could see his chest moving in and out as he breathed, fast and shallow, could see the blood rising to his face like sap. “I am not yours!” I shouted. The ropes slid from his lap and I grabbed them, grunting as I pushed him down. He did not fight. He moved feebly, as though too drunk or stoned to control his limbs. I wrapped the hempen cord around first one wrist and then the other, the rope like a brand against his white skin, his veins the same glaucous color as the ivy in his hair. When I had knotted the ropes and drawn his wrists together behind his back I did the same to his ankles, pushing him down roughly when he struggled.

In a few minutes it was done. He lay on his side, long hair disheveled, the crown of ivy falling over his eyes. His cock was erect, no longer red but a deep angry blue, almost violet. In the guttering candlelight his hair looked gray-green, the color of old lichen. I knelt beside him, my breath quickening. With one I finger circled his nipple, teasing it until it stiffened. I took my thumbnail, pressed it against the base of the nipple and drew it upward, hard. He groaned, and a stippled line of tiny red dots appeared. I touched one, drew my finger to my mouth and tasted.