Poppy Z. Brite - 1992 - Lost Souls (37 page)

 
          
This
is all you need to know: whatever they are, so am I.”

 
          
“What
are you, then?”

 
          
“I
wish you could
toll
me,” Nothing said. “I wish you
remembered your dreams.” He let go of Ghost and turned toward the club.

 
          
But
in Nothing’s path was a shape that stood tall and awry, blocking the sidewalk.
A scarecrow with hair wild and tangled, shirttails flapping, feet planted wide
apart in a half-crouch, knees bent at crazy angles, arms outstretched, fingers
clawing at the night. A shape that moved in a cloud of beer and murder-lust.
Steve.

 
          
His
eyes found Ghost, wavered, shone. “Where the fuck is she? She’s with a guy. I
know she’s with a guy. I’ll kill ‘
em
both. Where the
fuck—”

 
          
The
door of the van slammed again. Ann was there, steadying herself with one hand
against the side of the van. Her hair was rumpled, her face flushed. Behind
her, Zillah stepped out, placing his feet carefully on the sidewalk.

 
          
Zillah
was wearing pink sneakers, Ghost saw. The laces were printed with some kind of
bright pattern—it looked like letters, but Ghost couldn’t make them out. Zillah
looked at Nothing and smiled darkly. Nothing gave him a shaky smile in return,
a smile that made Ghost want to cry, a smile that proved better than anything
else that Nothing was lost.

 
          
Steve
looked from Zillah to Ann. His eyes gleamed; his mouth worked soundlessly.

 
          
“Ann?”
he managed at last. “You
didn
’…you
cou’n
’ …

 
          
Ann
walked right up to Steve. She held her head high and her back very straight,
smiled sweetly into his stricken face.

 
          
“I
could and I did,” she said, “and you don’t have a goddamn thing to say about
it.”

 
          
“But
he … but he …” Wordlessly, Steve gestured at Zillah, who turned away smiling.

 
          
Ghost
couldn’t tell whether Steve had noticed Zillah’s unmarked face.

 
          
“He
was the best lover I’ve ever had. He made you look pretty sorry. But you don’t
need anyone to make you look sorry, do you? You do just fine on your own—or
maybe with a little help from your bottle. Why don’t you just get out of my
life, Steve? Why don’t you just drink yourself into an early grave?”

 
          
“Shut
up, Ann.” Ghost spoke mildly, but his face was pale, and his hands were
clenched into tight fists. He wondered how events had managed to fall into
place this way, the worst way anyone could imagine.

 
          
Bad
times coming, said a voice in his head. But they were already here.

 
          
Ann’s
eyes flickered to Ghost. “I’m sorry you have to see this,” she told him.

 
          
“‘You’re
good, Ghost, you really are. You better get away from this loser before he
fucks up your life the way he fucked up mine.” She turned and walked away, back
to Zillah, who was leaning against the van. Steve watched her go, terrible
emotions warring in his face.

 
          
Ann
reached Zillah and tried to link her arm with his. For a moment it seemed that
he would embrace her. But then Zillah’s hands closed on her shoulders, and he
gave her a hard shove away from him. Ann staggered, almost lost her balance on
the curb. Her head snapped back and hit the side of the van, and she barely
managed to keep her balance. Zillah gazed at Steve. His eyes were triumphant.
“So sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know the slut belonged to you.”

 
          
With
a low, desperate cry, Steve threw himself at Zillah. Ghost grabbed for him,
trying to catch Steve’s arm or the back of his shirt, anything. He was afraid
of what Zillah might do to Steve, who was hurting worse than ever before, who
was too drunk to know what he was doing.

 
          
But
Ghost’s hands closed on air.

 
          
Steve
lurched forward. Zillah’s arm shot out, something pearly and silver glittering
in his hand, and Ghost caught a glimpse of Zillah’s expression—amused boredom.
Then Steve staggered back, blood dripping down his face, making dark flowers on
his shirt. The razor had opened his forehead just above the eyebrows, and blood
was pouring into his eyes, blinding him. He stumbled toward where he had last
seen Zillah, taking wild swings at the air.

 
          
Horrified,
Ghost tried again to grab him. Surely now the razor would take out one of
Steve’s eyes or slice straight across his throat.

 
          
But
Zillah had other things in mind. He sidestepped neatly, then stuck a
pink-sneakered foot into Steve’s path. Before Ghost could get to him, Steve
tripped over it and went down on the sidewalk.

 
          
Ghost
knelt beside Steve and shoved the messy hair back from his face. The cut across
his forehead looked shallow, but it had to hurt like hell. Through some reflex
not quite drowned in beer he had managed to get his hands in front of him as he
hit the pavement, and his palms were scraped raw.

 
          
Ghost
searched for Steve’s mind with his own, wanting to soothe it. No good.

 
          
Steve’s
mind was inflamed, walled off, and Ghost could only feel around the edges of
it.

 
          
Its
heat hurt him. He drew his own mind back, but held Steve fighter.

 
          
“What
the hell do you mean?” Ann asked. But there was little anger in her voice.

 
          
She
was edging toward Zillah. Her eyes never left his face; she didn’t seem to
notice Steve bleeding on the sidewalk. “How can you call me a slut? That was
magic. No one ever made me feel so good. Your cock—your tongue-” She shuddered.

 
          
Ghost
shut his eyes and pressed his face to Steve’s. Steve growled deep in his
throat, low and feral, and tried to struggle back up. Ghost held him down. If
Steve got loose now, he would kill someone or get killed, and the latter seemed
a lot more likely.

 
          
“My
apologies,” said Zillah. ‘What was an unkind word. But you mustn’t love me. I
have a lover already, if he has learned his lesson.” He held out his arms to
Nothing.

 
          
After
the barest hesitation Nothing went to him, huddled into the curve of Zillah’s
arm, laid his head on Zillah’s shoulder.

 
          
“No,”
said Ann. There was dull desperation in her voice. “No. I’ve never fucked
anyone else like that. You can’t leave me.

 
          
Steve
made a low choking sound, twisted his head, buried his face in Ghost’s lap.

 
          
His
raw hands scraped weakly at the sidewalk. Ghost caught them and held them
tight.

 
          
Nothing
looked at Ann. His expression was pitying, a little disdainful. “Go away,” he
told her. “Go find somebody else. I belong here–not you.”

 
          
Ann’s
face twisted. She stared around wildly, as if the night and the broken glass
and the boarded-up storefronts were suddenly strange to her. Ghost ached to go
to her, even after all she had said and done, but he couldn’t let go of Steve.
Ann’s mouth opened, and for seconds it seemed as if her scream must split the
night wide open.

 
          
But
then, from far down the sidewalk, another voice came. A loud voice, full of
drunken cheer. “Hey! Zillah! Look who we found—it’s Chrissy!”

 
          
Christian
could barely stand up straight. This was what it must be like to
he
drunk. Of course, Twig’s arm was looped tight around
Christian’s neck and Molochai seemed to be leaning his full weight against
Christian, but it was not the burden of Molochai and Twig that made him
unsteady on his feet. It was a combination of relief and giddiness, their warm
coppery smell and the touch of skin that would not soon be dead and cold.

 
          
They
had waited for him until his shift at the bar was over, chattering about cities
they had seen over the past years, rare new drugs they had taken, impossible
scenes of carnage through which they had come unscathed. They assured him that
Zillah was with them, still very much alive.

 
          
After
the bar closed, they dragged him out of the club before Kinsey could give him
his cash pay. Their van was parked a few blocks away. Christian saw an
assortment of figures on the sidewalk near it. One of them was Zillah, and
something in Christian loosened at the sight of those brilliant green eyes,
that face still so insouciant and smooth. For fifteen years he had waited to
see that face again. Zillah greeted him with a raised eyebrow and a small evil
smile.

 
          
But
who were these others? Two of them he had seen before. The girl with the
smudged face, she had been at the club tonight. And the fair boy, the one whose
pale eyes widened when he saw Christian—well, he was the singer for Lost Souls?
But there was something else about him … Seeing him up close, Christian
remembered. This was the boy who had come riding his bicycle at twilight, when
Christian was about to close up his flower stand and go hunting. He had been so
hungry, barely able to wait, but for reasons he could not explain to himself he
had not wanted to take that boy.

 
          
Another
boy—the guitarist, Christian thought—lay on the sidewalk, his face buried in
the fair one’s lap, his long legs sprawled at an uncomfortable angle. Christian
smelled his blood, but it was of secondary interest to him. For there was
another figure here, an unfamiliar one.

 
          
Huddled
beside Zillah, standing in Zillah’s shadow so that Christian had not noticed
him at once …

 
          
This
must surely be the true child of night, the soul of all the thin children who
wore black, who traced their eyes in kohl and stared out their windows waiting
for the sun to set. This boy looked as if he had been raised in the back room
of some hole-in-the-wall nightclub, fed on bread soaked in milk and whiskey,
the bones of his face shaped fine by hunger. That was the word for this child:
hungry. For what?—for drunkenness, for salvation or damnation, for the night
itself. The shadows beneath his eyes might have been painted in watercolor. The
wrists protruding from the cuffs of his raincoat were thin, delicately knobby.

 
          
Christian
disengaged himself from Molochai and Twig, took a
stop
closer. He did not know that he licked his lips. “Who are you?” he asked.

 
          
“This
is Nothing,” Zillah told him.

 
          
The
name took a moment to register. But Christian had never forgotten Jessy or her
beautiful sugar-candy baby. All through the years he had wondered whether he
might have kept the baby and cared for it himself; time after time he had
reminded himself that he had abandoned it to give it a chance at a life
untainted by blood. But he had never forgot-ton. Now he knew that he might as
well have kept the baby after all. Blood calls to blood; curses and blessings
find the ones they were meant for.

 
          
“Nothing?”
he asked, and took another step toward the boy. Shyly, the child nodded.

 
          
Christian
closed his eyes, and the words of his note pinned to a blanket on some long-ago
cold dawn came back to him. “‘His name is Nothing.’” he quoted. “‘Care for him
and he will bring you luck.’”

 
          
He
was not at all prepared for the boy’s reaction. Nothing tore himself away from
Zillah and launched himself at Christian, threw his arms around Christian’s
waist.

 
          
Christian
felt the boy’s body pressing against him, warm and vital.

 
          
“Yes!”
Nothing cried. “Yes! Yes! They changed my name! They called me Jason but I
hated them and I’m still Nothing and now I’m home and you know who I am! Tell
me! Tell me who I am!”