Poppy Z. Brite - 1992 - Lost Souls (13 page)

 
          
“Daddy.”

 
          
Wallace
forced his eyes open. He was not at home, standing in the hallway outside
Jessy’s
room. He was weaving down Bienville, breathing in
the cool night air, heading for the river. But the past sucked him in again,
and it was that day ….

 
          
Jessy
was calling him. For ten years they had been alone except for each other, ever
since the day Wallace had found Lydia in her cooling red bathwater with her
forearms slashed open from wrist to elbow. He was
Jessy’s
father, and he had to go to Jessy when she called. She might need him.

 
          
“Daddy,”
she called softly. “Daddy …”

 
          
Wallace
looked at the old sign on
Jessy’s
bedroom door–a
cartoon rabbit in rainbow-spattered overalls paining the words GENIUS AT WORK
then turned the knob and stepped out of the dark hallway into brightness.
Jessy’s
room always caught the morning sunlight.

 
          
She’d
just come out of the shower, and her skin was as pink and white and dewy as
spring. Her hair fell wet and straight along her cheeks. As he stared at her,
she let the green towel fall from her breasts. Wallace had not seen his
daughter’s body since she was a young child, plump and androgynous, with pink
buttons for nipples and a tiny clean fold of a sex. But now her breasts were
round and smooth, with a girlish heaviness to them, and Wallace wondered how it
would be to cup their weight in his hands, how it would taste if he took one of
those creamy strawberry peaks in his mouth and sucked.

 
          
“I’m
going to
he
a vampire, Daddy.”

 
          
He
could not find his voice. There was no spit in his mouth. “Put your clothes on,
Jessy.”

 
          
It
was a dry whisper, weak and useless.

 
          
“I’m
going to bite people, Daddy. I’m going to feed on them. I need blood. Hot …
rich … red blood. I need your blood, Daddy. I’m hungry. Your
Jessy’s
hungry. Come to me.” He did not know how he got to
the bed. Surely if she had not cajoled so, if she were not his daughter, his
only joy, if he had not always tried to give her everything she asked
for…surely if he had lain with some other woman in the ten years since Lydia
was gone…surely then, if the ache in his groin had not come bursting forth, he
would not have let her lay him out and undo his trousers and straddle him,
slipping around him as smooth and tight as sea anemones. Surely he would not
have groaned and squeezed her heavy soft breasts between his fingers and thrust
up and up into his daughter’s wet-velvet heaven until she bent over him and he
felt a metallic sting as of a razor blade beneath his jaw. Jessy fastened her
lips there. He felt her throat working as she swallowed. Then a black and
crimson mist began to drift into the edges of his vision.

 
          
He
awoke tangled in
Jessy’s
rumpled sheets that smelled
of girl-skin. There was a nick on his throat, no worse than a bad shaving cut,
smeared with dried blood and spit.

 
          
He
did not wash it. Jessy was gone.

 
          
After
a few nights he began to look for her in all the places she had mentioned.

 
          
All
the nighttime haunts, the dark bars and clubs in the French Quarter. He did not
know what he would say if he saw Jessy. He had begun to feel as if the thing
that had happened were his fault, as if he had seduced her. As if he had forced
himself into her. He did not know whether he would be able to meet his
daughter’s eyes. But that did not matter, for he never saw Jessy again.

 
          
More
and more often during his search, he found himself drawn to the place called
Christian’s, the dark bar with the stained-glass windows that threw colored
shadows onto the sidewalk. It was a little place way down Chartres, away from
the life of the Quarter.

 
          
He
came here because he knew Jessy had liked the place, and he decided he might as
well have a drink or two or three. He watched the bartender. Christian moved
behind the bar, mixing drinks with detached expertise, answering his customers’
chatter politely if rather coldly. Unless someone spoke to Christian, he was
silent.

 
          
When
Wallace watched Christian, studied the impossibly tall, gaunt, pale figure
always dressed in black, the idea of
Jessy’s
vampires
no longer seemed quite so preposterous. Something about Christian frightened
him. Wallace thought of himself as a religious man, but when he was in that
chilly presence, God’s warmth seemed to shrivel inside him. One night their
eyes met across the bar, and Wallace felt his spine turn to ice. The coldness
in Christian’s eyes—that awful, empty coldness, like winds blowing across
barren plains—was more convincing than all
Jessy’s
talk, her books and movies, her fevered drinking of blood.

 
          
Wallace
could not forget those eyes. When he’d seen them again tonight, he had felt the
same icy hand, the same helpless fury. Wallace believed in vampires now.

 
          
Tonight,
though, he would not be helpless. Fifteen years ago he had been afraid.

 
          
His
fear no longer mattered, not now. The finger of God had touched him, a fearful,
excruciating touch that wrenched his insides and sometimes drew thin dirty
blood from them, and soon he would be with Jessy. Tonight he would avenge her,
and he would have his memories of her again, his memories of a child who danced
and laughed, of a child who loved him, who was not a dark creature of sex and
blood. He would eradicate his damnable sin. He would redeem himself.

 
          
The
air sobered him. He drew himself up, refused to sway, refused to let his
dizziness and fear overtake him. Tonight belonged to him, and to Jessy.

 
          
He
walked toward the river.

 
          
Twig
kept up a steady string of curses as they drove into DC. The streets seemed
skewed to him, the signs indecipherable. Finally he turned the wrong way down a
one-way street, screeched to a halt in front of a fancy hotel, and said,
‘That’s where we’re staying.”

 
          
Molochai
waved the parking valet over, and Twig presented him with the keys to the van.

 
          
“Remember
which one is ours,” he told the valet. “We want this van back, not some pussy
Volvo.”

 
          
The
lobby was all plush and marble opulence, red-carpet gaudy splendor. They
appreciated it not a bit. As they checked in, Molochai gaped up at the
three-tiered crystal chandelier, and Twig palmed the desk clerk’s cigarettes.

 
          
Their
room was not as gaudy as the public facade of the hotel. Here on the twentieth
floor there was only pale carpeting as thick and rich as whipped cream. Zillah
slipped his shoes off and wriggled his toes in its creamy depths. Here were
only deep, cloud-soft beds and sofas that one might drown in, falling forever,
never to be seen again. Oh yes, they could have fun here.

 
          
He
drifted to the window and pulled aside heavy draperies. The city gleamed far
below, green and white, immaculate. The crazy pattern of the streets was a
puzzle that wanted deciphering. In the center of it all the Washington Monument
soared up, as clean and stark as a bone. Zillah smiled a small secret smile.
The city was delicious. All cities were delicious. They had only to wait until
nightfall.

 
          
From
behind him came a great howl of delight as Molochai and Twig saw the whirlpool
bathtub. Zillah turned to see them tipping at each other’s clothes, throwing
shirts and sneakers and socks all over the room in their haste to get
undressed. He watched them for a moment, still smiling, then untied the purple
scarf that bound his ponytail and began combing his hair with his fingers,
smoothing its silky length, untangling the snarls made by the wind on the road.
Hair slipped between his fingers, tumbled down over his shoulders.

 
          
Molochai
and Twig stood together by the whirlpool, naked as babes, waiting to see what
Zillah would do. Zillah slipped out of his trousers and jacket, pulled his
loose black T-shirt over his head. He wore no underwear; none of them did. Slim
as a girl, he stood looking at Molochai and Twig, his skin creamy pale, his
hair the color of coffee with milk.

 
          
They
moved toward one another until their shoulders were almost touching. All three
bodies bore the marks of various piercings, tattoos, and scarifications. Living
so long in the same unchanging flesh made them restless; they were compelled to
change it themselves. Age did its own decorating of human bodies—wrinkles,
wattled
flesh, random
sproutings
of coarse yellowish hair. Molochai, Twig, and Zillah were much more pleased
with their own methods of decoration: silver rings, intricate patterns in ink
or raised flesh.

 
          
Twig
had twin strands of barbed wire tattooed on his wrists, twining up both arms,
and two long thin pieces of metal that pierced the thin skin of his stomach
just below the rib cage on either side, capped with nuggets of hone he had
saved to have honed and fitted. Zillah wore silver hoops through his nipples;
Molochai’s were pierced with safety pins, from one of which dangled a polished
fingerbone
. All three had foreskin rings (because of the
circumstances surrounding their births, few of their race were circumcised as
babies). They had linked these together to pose for a series of studies by a
famous photographer of erotica, Zillah standing on an inlaid-teak stool that
brought his ting up to the level of the others’.

 
          
Zillah
put his hand on Molochai’s shoulder and pushed gently down. Molochai knelt
before him and embraced Zillah’s narrow hips. His mouth brushed soft skin and
silky hair.

 
          
He
put out his tongue and felt Zillah shiver. Then Zillah’s hand was under his
chin, cupping his face and tilting it up. Molochai looked up into Zillah’s
eyes. Green.

 
          
Glowing,
melting green.

 
          
“Molochai,”
said Zillah.

 
          
Molochai
was lost in the luminescent sea of green; he could not answer.

 
          
“Molochai.”

 
          
He
shook himself. “What?”

 
          
Zillah’s
face was calm. A small smile played about his lips. “Do you want something from
room service?”

 
          
Molochai
stared up at Zillah for a few moments. Then he hugged Zillah tighter, and it was
as if two jagged edges fitted together inside him. He turned and saw Twig
standing jealously alone, watching them. They each put out an arm to Twig, and
he came to them.

 
          
“I
want champagne,” said’ Molochai. “And I want whipped cream and, kidneys and chocolate
truffles and baby’s-blood ice cream.

 
          
They
stood together, naked and embracing, the three of them as much a family as
anyone could be, anywhere, ever.

 
          
In
the foamy waters of the whirlpool Zillah pulled Molochai and Twig to him and
dipped his tongue into their mouths, sweet with cake and cream, sharp and sour
with champagne. Once more they began their game of spit and skin and passion,
of slippery hands and soft bites, and sometimes harder bites. They played the
game they knew so well, the game they had played for such a long time, and when
they were clone Molochai and Twig snuggled against Zillah in the steamy
swirling water, their heads on his shoulders, their hands linked across his
chest The three closed their eyes and dreamed their warm bloody dreams. For a
few hours they could rest, and then it would be time to go out and party again.

 
          
When
night folded like a deep blue cloak over the city, they roused themselves from
their wet languor and began pulling on black shirts, black socks, dirty black
sneakers. They favored black clothes because dark red stains would not show on
them.