Last Summer at Mars Hill (12 page)

A tiny cloud of dust as she pounded the scrapbook. Haley stared at it and then at Aurora. She wondered unhappily if Linette would be back soon; wondered, somewhat shamefully because for the first time, exactly what had happened last night at Kingdom Come.

“Do you see what I mean, Haley? Do you understand now?” Aurora brushed the girl’s face with her finger. Her touch was ice cold and stank of nicotine.

Haley swallowed. “N-no,” she said, trying not to flinch. “I mean, I thought they all, like, OD’d or something.”

Aurora nodded excitedly. “They did!
Of course
they did—but that was afterward—that was how they
paid
—”

Paid. Selling souls. Aurora and her weird friends talked like that sometimes. Haley bit her lip and tried to look thoughtful. “So they, like, sold their souls to the devil?”

“Of course!” Aurora croaked triumphantly. “How else would they have ever got where they did? Superstars! Rich and famous! And for what reason? None of them had any talent—
none
of them—but they ended up on TV, and in
Vogue,
and in the movies—how else could they have done it?”

She leaned forward until Haley could smell her sickly berry-scented lipstick mingled with the gin. “They all thought they were getting such a great deal, but look how it ended—famous for fifteen minutes, then
pffftttt
!”

“Wow,” Haley said again. She had no idea, really, what Aurora was talking about. Some of these people she’d heard of, in magazines or from Aurora and her friends, but mostly their names were meaningless. A bunch of nobodies that nobody but Aurora had ever even cared about.

She glanced down at the scrapbook and felt a small sharp chill beneath her breast. Quickly she glanced up again at Aurora: her ruined face, her eyes; that tattoo like a faded brand upon her neck. A sudden insight made her go
hmm
beneath her breath—

Because maybe that was the point; maybe Aurora wasn’t so crazy, and these people really
had
been famous once. But now for some strange reason no one remembered any of them at all; and now they were all dead. Maybe they really were all under some sort of curse. When she looked up Aurora nodded, slowly, as though she could read her thoughts.

“It was at a party. At the Factory,” she began in her scorched voice. “We were celebrating the opening of
Scag
—that was the first movie to get real national distribution, it won the Silver Palm at Cannes that year. It was a fabulous party, I remember there was this huge Lalique bowl filled with cocaine and in the bathroom Doctor Bob was giving everyone a pop—

“About three
A.M.
most of the press hounds had left, and a lot of the neophytes were just too wasted and had passed out or gone on to Max’s. But Candy was still there, and Liatris, and Jackie and Lie Vagal—all the core people—and I was sitting by the door, I really was in better shape than most of them, or I thought I was, but then I looked up and there is this
guy
there I’ve never seen before. And, like, people wandered in and out of there all the time, that was no big deal, but I was sitting right by the door with Jackie, I mean it was sort of a joke, we’d been asking to see people’s invitations, turning away the offal, but I swear I never saw this guy come in. Later Jackie said
she’d
seen him come in through the fire escape; but I think she was lying. Anyway, it was weird.

“And so I must have nodded out for a while, because all of a sudden I jerk up and look around and here’s this guy with everyone huddled around him, bending over and laughing like he’s telling fortunes or something. He kind of looked like that, too, like a gypsy—not that everyone didn’t look like that in those days, but with him it wasn’t so much like an act. I mean, he had this long curly black hair and these gold earrings, and high suede boots and velvet pants, all black and red and purple, but with him it was like maybe he had
always
dressed like that. He was handsome, but in a creepy sort of way. His eyes were set very close together and his eyebrows grew together over his nose—that’s the mark of a warlock, eyebrows like that—and he had this very neat British accent. They always went crazy over anyone with a British accent.

“So obviously I had been missing something, passed out by the door, and so I got up and staggered over to see what was going on. At first I thought he was collecting autographs. He had this very nice leather-bound book, like an autograph book, and everyone was writing in it. And I thought, God, how tacky. But then it struck me as being weird, because a lot of those people—not Candy she’d sign
anything
—but a lot of the others, they wouldn’t be caught dead doing anything so bourgeois as signing autographs. But here just about everybody was passing this pen around—a nice gold Cross pen, I remember that—even Andy, and I thought, Well, this I got to see.

“So I edged my way in, and that’s when I saw they
were
signing their names. But it wasn’t an autograph book at all. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen before. There was something printed on every page, in this fabulous gold and green lettering, but very official-looking, like when you see an old-fashioned decree of some sort. And they were all signing their names on every page. Just like in a cartoon, you know, ‘Sign here!’ And, I mean, everyone had done it—Lie Vagal had just finished and when the man saw me coming over he held the book up and flipped through it real fast, so I could see their signatures…”

Haley leaned forward on her knees, heedless now of the smoke and Aurora’s huge eyes staring fixedly at the empty air.

“What was it?” the girl breathed. “Was it—?”

“It was
their souls.
” Aurora hissed the last word, stubbing out her cigarette in her empty mug. “Most of them, anyway—because,
get it,
who would ever want
their
souls? It was a standard contract—souls, sanity, first-born children. They all thought it was a joke—but look what happened.” She pointed at the scrapbook as though the irrefutable proof lay there.

Haley swallowed. “Did you—did
you
sign?”

Aurora shook her head and laughed bitterly. “Are you crazy? Would I be here now if I had? No, I didn’t, and a few others didn’t—Viva, Liatris and Coppelia, David Watts. We’re about all that’s left, now—except for one or two who haven’t paid up…”

And she turned and gazed out the window, to where the overgrown apple trees leaned heavily and spilled their burden of green fruit onto the stone wall that separated them from Kingdom Come.

“Lie Vagal,” Haley said at last. Her voice sounded hoarse as Aurora’s own. “So he signed it, too.”

Aurora said nothing, only sat there staring, her yellow hands clutching the thin fabric of her tunic. Haley was about to repeat herself, when the woman began to hum, softly and out of key Haley had heard that song before—just days ago, where was it? and then the words spilled out in Aurora’s throaty contralto:

“—Why trembles my darling? Why shrinks she with fear?’

—‘Oh, father! My father! The Erl-King is near!

‘The Erl-King, with his crown and his hands long and white!’

—‘Thine eyes are deceived by the vapors of night.’”

“That song!” exclaimed Haley. “He was singing it—”

Aurora nodded without looking at her.
“The Erl-King,”
she said. “He recorded it just a few months later…”

Her gaze dropped abruptly to the book at her knees. She ran her fingers along its edge, then as though with long practice opened it to a page towards the back. “There he is,” she murmured, and traced the outlines of a black-and-white photo, neatly pressed beneath its sheath of yellowing plastic.

It was Lie Vagal. His hair was longer, and black as a cat’s. He wore high leather boots, and the picture had been posed in a way to make him look taller than he really was. But what made Haley feel sick and frightened was that he was wearing makeup—his face powdered dead white, his eyes livid behind pools of mascara and kohl, his mouth a scarlet blossom. And it wasn’t that it made him look like a woman (though it did).

It was that he looked exactly like Linette.

Shaking her head, she turned towards Aurora, talking so fast her teeth chattered. “You—does she—does he—does he know?”

Aurora stared down at the photograph and shook her head. “I don’t think so. No one does. I mean, people might have suspected, I’m sure they talked, but—it was so long ago, they all forgot. Except for
him,
of course—”

In the air between them loomed suddenly the image of the man in black and red and purple, heavy gold rings winking from his ears. Haley’s head pounded and she felt as though the floor reeled beneath her. In the hazy air the shining figure bowed its head, light gleaming from the unbroken ebony line that ran above its eyes. She seemed to hear a voice hissing to her, and feel cold sharp nails pressing tiny half-moons into the flesh of her arm. But before she could cry out the image was gone. There was only the still dank room, and Aurora saying.

“…for a long time thought he would die, for sure—all those drugs—and then of course he went crazy; but then I realized he wouldn’t have made that kind of deal. Lie was sharp, you see; he
did
have some talent, he didn’t need this sort of—of
thing
to make him happen. And Lie sure wasn’t a fool. Even if he thought it was a joke, he was terrified of dying, terrified of losing his mind—he’d already had that incident in Marrakech—and so that left the other option; and since he never knew, I never told him; well, it must have seemed a safe deal to make…”

A deal. Haley’s stomach tumbled as Aurora’s words came back to her—
A standard contract
—
souls, sanity, first-born children.
“But how—” she stammered.

“It’s time.” Aurora’s hollow voice echoed through the chilly room. “It’s time, is all. Whatever it was that Lie wanted, he got; and now it’s time to pay up.”

Suddenly she stood, her foot knocking the photo album so that it skidded across the flagstones, and tottered back into the kitchen. Haley could hear the clatter of glassware as she poured herself more gin. Silently the girl crept across the floor and stared for another moment at the photo of Lie Vagal. Then she went outside.

She thought of riding her bike to Kingdom Come, but absurd fears—she had visions of bony hands snaking out of the earth and snatching the wheels as she passed—made her walk instead. She clambered over the stone wall, grimacing at the smell of rotting apples. The unnatural chill of Linette’s house had made her forget the relentless late-August heat and breathless air out here, no cooler for all that the sun had set and left a sky colored like the inside of a mussel shell. From the distant lake came the desultory thump of bullfrogs. When she jumped from the wall to the ground a windfall popped beneath her foot, spattering her with vinegary muck. Haley swore to herself and hurried up the hill.

Beneath the ultramarine sky the trees stood absolutely still, each moored to its small circle of shadow. Walking between them made Haley’s eyes hurt, going from that eerie dusk to sudden darkness and then back into the twilight. She felt sick, from the heat and from what she had heard. It was crazy of course, Aurora was always crazy; but Linette
hadn’t
come back, and it had been such a creepy place, all those pictures, and the old lady, and Lie Vagal himself skittering through the halls and laughing…

Haley took a deep breath, balled up her T-shirt to wipe the sweat from between her breasts. It was crazy, that’s all; but still she’d find Linette and bring her home.

On one side of the narrow bed Linette lay fast asleep, snoring quietly, her hair spun across her cheeks in a shadowy lace. She still wore the pale blue peasant’s dress she’d had on the night before, its hem now spattered with candle wax and wine. Lie leaned over her until he could smell it, the faint unwashed musk of sweat and cotton and some cheap drugstore perfume, and over all of it the scent of marijuana. The sticky end of a joint was on the edge of the bedside table, beside an empty bottle of wine. Lie grinned, remembering the girl’s awkwardness in smoking the joint. She’d had little enough trouble managing the wine. Aurora’s daughter, no doubt about that.

They’d spent most of the day in bed, stoned and asleep; most of the last evening as well, though there were patches of time he couldn’t recall. He remembered his grandmother’s fury when midnight rolled around and she’d come into the bedroom to discover the girl still with him, and all around them smoke and empty bottles. There’d been some kind of argument then with Gram, Linette shrinking into a corner with her kinkajou; and after that more of their laughing and creeping down hallways. Lie showed her all his paintings. He tried to show her the people, but for some reason they weren’t there, not even the three bears drowsing in the little eyebrow window in the attic half-bath. Finally, long after midnight, they’d fallen asleep, Lie’s fingers tangled in Linette’s long hair, chaste as kittens. His medication had long since leached away most sexual desire. Even before The Crash, he’d always been uncomfortable with the young girls who waited backstage for him after a show, or somehow found their way into the recording studio. That was why Gram’s accusations had infuriated him—

“She’s a friend, she’s just
a friend
—can’t I have any friends at all? Can’t I?” he’d raged, but of course Gram hadn’t understood, she never had. Afterwards had come that long silent night, with the lovely flushed girl asleep in his arms, and outside the hot hollow wind beating at the walls.

Now the girl beside him stirred. Gently Lie ran a finger along her cheekbone and smiled as she frowned in her sleep. She had her mothers huge eyes, her mother’s fine bones and milky skin, but none of that hardness he associated with Aurora Dawn. It was so strange, to think that a few days ago he had never met this child; might never have raised the courage to meet her, and now he didn’t want to let her go home. Probably it was just his loneliness; that and her beauty, her resemblance to all those shining creatures who had peopled his dreams and visions for so long. He leaned down until his lips grazed hers, then slipped from the bed.