Manitou Blood (13 page)

Frank switched off the television and lay back on his dark brown sheets. His apartment was soundproofed, but he could still hear sirens echoing and the dull thumping of helicopters. He wondered what it would be like if he woke up to find that he was the only person in Manhattan left alive. He imagined himself wandering from street to echoing street, past abandoned taxis and windblown newspapers.

He fell asleep. When he was an intern he had trained himself to sleep whenever he had the chance, and he could sleep deeply and dreamlessly and wake up exactly when he knew that he would be called for, to the second.

Outside his bedroom window, the howling of sirens went on, like wolves. Daylight disappeared early, without any sunset, and by 9:00 it was dark. He carried on sleeping, lying on his back, motionless, except for the slightly curled fingers of his left hand, which occasionally twitched.

A few minutes after 11:30, there was a creaking noise at his window. It didn't penetrate his sleep, even when it was followed by a sharp click, and then the sticky sound of rubber seals being parted as his window was opened. A warm surge of air swelled into the room, smelling of gasoline fumes, and hot concrete, and steam.

He thought he felt somebody stroke his forehead, and play with his hair. He snorted, and irritably shook his head. He didn't want to wake up yet and he didn't want to dream. He never allowed himself to dream. In dreams people told you critically important things that you couldn't understand, and you formed attachments to people who didn't exist.

“
Frank
,” said a soft voice.

He snorted again, but still refused to wake up.

“Frank, it's me.”

He turned over, tugging at the sheet.

“Frank, it's no use pretending. I know you can hear me.”

He licked his lips, which felt very dry. Then he gradually opened his eyes. Someone was sitting on the bed, right next to him. A woman, wearing something pale. The light from the hallway was shining behind her head, so that he couldn't clearly see her face. He lifted one arm to shield his eyes and said, “Christina?”

“I thought you were going to sleep forever.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” He tried to sit up, but the woman pressed a cold hand flat against his chest, and pushed him firmly back down again.

“Christina—there's a full-scale medical emergency, you shouldn't have come to the city.”

“But I'm not Christina, whoever Christina is.”

Frank reached across and switched on his square bedside lamp. “Oh, God,” he said, when he saw who the woman was. “Oh, God, it can't be.”

Susan Fireman reached out and took hold of his hand. Her eyes still seemed unfocused, and her face was still pallid, but she was smiling at him, and there was no doubt that she was alive.

“I thought you were dead,” said Frank, in a voice that sounded like somebody else's. “You died, didn't you? Your heart stopped.”

“I thought you would have known about death, being a doctor.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Death is for people who were born to die. Not for people like me.”

Frank took hold of her wrist, lifted her arm away and sat up straight. Susan Fireman continued to smile at him, her expression so beatific that it almost looked as if she were mad, or an angel, or a nun who had experienced a divine revelation.

“
Frank
,” she admonished him. “You mustn't take death so
literally
.”

“I'm dreaming,” he said. He slapped himself, hard, across the face. “Shit. I'm not dreaming. Maybe I'm dreaming that I'm dreaming.”

Susan Fireman touched his cheek with her fingertips, and they were very cold. “I know that you liked me. I know that you found me attractive. I saw how sad you were when you thought that I was dead.”

“For Christ's sake, you
are
dead!” Frank rolled across the bed, away from her, and stood up. “I was there when you died. They tried to resuscitate you but they couldn't. I'm dreaming this; or hallucinating. Maybe I've contracted your infection. Maybe this is one of those nightmares.”

“Frank, I thought that you
liked
me.”

“Like you? How can I like you? You're dead, and it's absolutely impossible that you're here. Logically, medically, it's impossible.”

Susan Fireman stood up, too, and walked around the bed. She moved with an extraordinary jerking motion, as if she were in a film, and some of the frames were missing. She raised both arms as if she wanted him to embrace her. “I'm here, Frank, and that's the only logic that means anything.”

“How did you get in?” he said, and almost as he said it, he caught sight of the bedroom window, tilted ajar.

“I can get in anywhere. The pale ones always can.”

Frank still thought that he was dreaming. Susan Fireman had denied any knowledge of the pale ones, hadn't she?

“I'm going to wake up,” he told her. “On the count of three, I'm going to wake up, and you, my dear, will no longer be here. One, two,
three!
”

“We could be so good together, Frank.
You
could be a pale one, too.”

He closed his eyes tight, waited, and then opened them again. But Susan Fireman was still standing in front of him.

“If I can't make you disappear, I want you to go. However you managed to get in here, I want you to leave the same way.”

“But Frank . . . don't you want to know what happened to me? Don't you want to find out why all of these people seem to be sick?”

“What are you talking about?”

“This epidemic—all of these people killing their friends and their loved ones and drinking their blood.”

“You know why they're doing it?”

“Of course . . . it happened to
me
, didn't it?”

“Why didn't you say something before, when you were in the hospital?”

She reached her hand out again, but Frank stepped back and said, “Just don't touch me, okay?”

“Frank, don't be angry with me. If I had understood what was happening to me when I was in the hospital, I would have told you, I promise you. But I didn't, not then. I needed to pass through . . . to see it from the other side.”

“So you can tell me now? This is crazy. I must be suffering from overwork.”

She smiled at him slyly. “First things first,” she told him. She crossed her arms and lifted off her nightdress, so that she was naked. Her breasts were tiny, but her nipples were hard and knurled. She had a gold piercing-ring shining between her hairless lips.

Frank said nothing, but watched her, warily, keeping his hands by his sides, and breathing very deeply. He had been caught before by a frustrated female patient who had accused him of molesting her, and it had led to months of legal argument and thousands of dollars of expense. He didn't want anything like that to happen again.

Susan Fireman sat down on the bed. “Come here,” she said.

Frank shook his head. “No way. One, I don't believe that this is really happening. You're some kind of hallucination, and I don't even know why I'm talking to you. Two, if this
is
happening, and you
are
real, I don't want to have anything to do with you.”

“Frank, this isn't a dream. You're awake.”

“How can I be? Even if you didn't die, you couldn't have left the hospital and climbed in through my window. There's a sheer drop out there—seventy-five feet at least.”

“Any wall can be climbed, Frank, if you have the ability to climb it.”

She waited for a moment and then she stood up again. He backed away from her until he reached the bedroom wall, and he couldn't back away any further. She came up so close to him that he could feel how cold she was. It was almost as if she was draining the warmth right out of the surrounding air. “You're desperate to find out what happened to me, aren't you? And you
want
me, too. You know you do.”

She reached down and took hold of his penis through his thin blue-striped cotton shorts. Although her fingers were so cold, he felt aroused, and he began to stiffen. She slowly rubbed him, up and down, digging her thumbnail into the ridge of his glans.

“You see?” she challenged him. “I was right on both counts. I'm real, and you want me.”

Frank had never felt anything like this, ever. He was so frightened that he was shaking, but his fear seemed to excite
him more than he had ever thought possible. What was happening to him was the stuff of insanity. Susan Fireman was dead, and so she couldn't have climbed into his window, and she couldn't be talking to him, and rubbing his penis. The madness of it made his erection stiffen harder and harder, until it hurt, and he didn't know whether to wrench himself away, or shout out for help, or allow Susan Fireman to go on rubbing him. He couldn't think straight. It seemed as if the only way to escape from this nightmare was to live through it, until he woke up.

Very softly, Susan Fireman said, “I didn't know it myself, not until now, but there have always been
other people
.”

Frank couldn't speak. The coldness of her hand had made his penis feel numb, and the coldness was beginning to penetrate deep between his legs, as if somebody was pushing an icicle into his bowels.

“
Other people
, do you understand what I'm telling you? Different people, who live different lives. In darkness, and shadows, and closed boxes.”

With one hand, she tugged down his shorts, and they dropped onto the floor, around his ankles. She gripped his bare erection even harder, and each downstroke was so powerful that he felt as if she were trying to rip his skin off.

“They've always been with us,” she whispered. “They've always been hiding, and waiting. And now they're free!”

Still gripping his penis, she dragged him toward the bed. He felt totally helpless, as if he had to do whatever she told him to do. She lay back on the bed, and opened her legs wide. Even inside her, her flesh was pale, although it was shining with juice. “Come on, Frank,” she urged him. “You know how much you want me.”

He half-stumbled onto the bed. “Here,” she coaxed him, and she pulled him nearer, and then she guided him into her. Inside, she felt chilly and slippery, like wet filleted fish. But even though the sensation of penetrating to her was so unpleasant, he couldn't find the strength or the focus to
pull himself out of her. She gripped his buttocks and began to urge him rhythmically forward, smiling at him all the time. He couldn't believe how strong she was, for a girl so slight. She pulled him more and more forcefully, her nails digging into his skin. “You're
mine
now, Frank,” she panted. “My protégé. One to another, like Chinese whispers, that's how it goes. It's a secret message.”

“Guh-
god
,” he stammered.

Triumphantly, gasping, she pulled him into her: pull—
pull
—pull—
pull
, and with every pull she arched her back, so that he could feel her bony pelvis tilting up to dig into his hips.

He began to shudder. He felt as if his testicles had frozen solid, into eggs of ice, and that they were gradually being crushed, with greater and greater force. The cold between his legs was almost unbearable, but at the same time he felt an overwhelming urge to climax, and he began to push forward—until she no longer needed to pull him, because he was forcing his penis into her as if he were trying to split her in half.

He grunted, and stammered, and snorted, and then he ejaculated. He felt as if thick jets of freezing slush were pumping out of him—one, two, three. When he had stopped quaking he knelt between Susan Fireman's legs with his head bowed, while Susan Fireman stroked his shoulders with her cold, trailing fingertips, and his back, and his hips, and cupped his shrunken scrotum in the palm of her hand.

Frank eventually fell sideways, and lay there, shivering, like a dog dragged out of a river. Susan Fireman turned to him so that their faces were only three or four inches apart, almost too close for Frank to focus.

“A secret message,” she breathed.

“What secret message? I don't understand.”

She kissed him, twice. “They brought it all the way from the home country, don't you see, hidden in their blood.”

“Who did?” he croaked. “Who are you talking about?”

“
Strigoi
, they call themselves. The people who never die.”

“
Strigoi?
”

“That's right. And now they've brought their message here, and we can help them to spread it. Me, and you, and anybody else we choose. It isn't a written message. Not a message that anybody can whisper.” She sat up, and looked down at him. “In a few hours, my darling Frank, you will pass through, too, and understand everything.”

He tried to lift his head, but she pushed him back down.

“There's one more thing,” she said. “We have to make sure.”

She climbed on top of him, with those thin, chilly limbs, and straddled him. Then she maneuvered herself upward until her shins were pressed hard against his shoulders and she was kneeling over his face. He looked up and he could see the pale bloodless waves of her lips, and her gold piercing-ring. She was brimming with semen, and two pearly drops were sliding down her thigh.

“What are you doing?” he said. He was beginning to wonder if this wasn't a nightmare after all, and that Susan Fireman, even if she was dead, was really here.

She looked down at him. Her eyes looked dreamy, but she was no longer smiling.

“We have to make
sure
, Frank,” she repeated.

He tried to struggle himself up, but as he did so, a drop of cold semen fell onto his lips. He tried to spit it away, but Susan Fireman stuck out her finger and poked it into his mouth.

“There,” she said, smiling again, and climbed off him.