Poppy Z. Brite - 1992 - Lost Souls (41 page)

 
          
“You
won’t get it,” Ghost told him.

 
          
“How
do you–” Steve slapped his knees. “Okay. Okay. I won’t get it. Do we have to
wait tin somebody slings a rotting corpse at us, or can we go over to R.J.‘s
now?”

 
          
“Sure.
We can go to R.J.‘s.” If Steve wanted to pretend he hadn’t heard Nothing’s
parting words, if Steve bad refused to notice that mouthful of sharpened teeth,
Ghost wasn’t going to force it. It would catch up to Steve sooner or later, and
then all hell would break loose.

 
          
The
lights were bright at the party. Terry
Buckett
answered the door wearing a pair of long johns with psychedelic peace signs
painted all over them. He took one look at Steve, pointed over his shoulder,
and said, “The keg’s that way.”

 
          
They
found it out on the back porch in a garbage can full of ice. As Ghost was
pumping it, R.J. caught up with them. His Dracula makeup was smudged on his
nose where he kept pushing his glasses up. “We’re having a vampire film
festival,” he explained, supporting himself against the porch railing. “They’re
just finishing up Near Dark, that one’s real cool. You missed The Lost Boys.”

 
          
“
Fuckin
’ shame,” said Steve darkly, draining half of his
first beer.

 
          
RJ.
put a dripping cup into Ghost’s hand. He sipped it, tasting the tingling foam
and the barley funk and something metallic. Something metallic and red— No. The
beer was clear, white and golden, pure. He swallowed that mouthful in a hurry.
Then he drank off the rest of the cup.

 
          
Ghost
sat on the floor and drank two more cups of beer. Vamp was on now. All the
vampires seemed to be aged, running a honky-tonk joint, the remainders of a
glorious race. He tried to talk to Monica when she walked by, but she was
dressed as the Raven and would only say “Nevermore.”

 
          
He
was about to go in search of some fruit juice when Steve loomed in front of
him, swaying slightly, reeking of beer, his T-shirt stained with it. Steve
grabbed Ghost’s hands and pulled him up. “Let’s go.”

 
          
They
staggered out to the T-bird, Steve leaning most of his weight on Ghost. When
Steve tried to get behind the wheel, Ghost said, “Uh-uh. I’m driving.”

 
          
Steve
put the keys in his hand without argument. Ghost slid in and cranked up the
engine.

 
          
Beside
him, Steve lay against the passenger door, eyes
slitted
,
staring up at the night sky.

 
          
Ghost
reached over and touched Steve’s shoulder. “Steve. Hey, Steve. Where we going?”

 
          
“New
Orleans,” said Steve without looking away from the stars. “Drive.”

 
          
“She’s
going to what?” said Molochai when Christian told them.

 
          
“Again?”
said Twig. “What would we do with a baby?”

 
          
“We
could eat it,” Molochai offered.

 
          
Zillah
grimaced. “Eat my baby! Are you mad?” After a moment’s reflection he added,
“Nothing and I might eat it, but you couldn’t have any.”

 
          
“
Zilllllaaaah
…”

 
          
“
Pleeeeeezzze
?…”

 
          
“Not
one drop. Not one pink sugar drop.”

 
          
They
might eat it, too, thought Christian. They just might, even if it was Nothing’s
half-brother or -sister. The idea did not strike Christian as particularly
immoral, but it made him sad. He stood silently before them, considering
Zillah. Those eyes, and the perfect pink lips twisted in amusement or disgust,
and his entourage clustered around him.

 
          
For
a moment Christian almost disliked them. Not Nothing, but the other three. He
hated their insouciance, their cheerful cruelty. They didn’t care about the
girl. Their time in Missing Mile was done. They would go on to New Orleans and
carry on their never-ending party without a backward glance. It did not matter
to them that another girl’s belly would swell with a malignant child, a child
that would eventually rip her open and bleed her dry.

 
          
“You
must get rid of it,” he had told her. He’d been out behind the trailer cutting
the last roses of the season. The bushes were dry now, brown and gnarled.
Somehow he would have to stretch his income from the bartending job to pay the
rent on the trailer and buy the sweets and liquor that the others throve upon.

 
          
Nothing
had already offered to look for a job; he was goodhearted, but what place would
hire a boy who looked so young and so strange? And Molochai, Twig, and Zillah
were used to their luxurious nomadic life, travelling from city to city, living
off the blood and money of their kills. But in Missing Mile there were no
wealthy victims. There were only drifters and bastard children and
travellers
who had lost their way.

 
          
As
he was cutting the last rose, a great frothy pink-orange thing whose veined
petals curled delicately into red at the edges, the girl Ann came up behind him
and touched his sleeve.

 
          
Christian
had seen her near the trailer before, trying to look through the windows,
tugging at the doors of the black van. He had not known precisely what had
happened between her and Zillah.

 
          
When
she told him, Christian’s heart sank. Had Zillah grown up not at all in fifteen
years? Had he never heard of condoms?

 
          
“I’ll
have a beautiful baby,” she said. “With green, green eyes.”

 
          
“It
will kill you,” he told her. “They’ll leave you and you’ll be alone, and it
will kill you.”

 
          
He
turned to face her, the huge rose in one hand, a rusty pair of scissors in the
other. “Listen to me. You have to get rid of it. You must.”

 
          
“Why?”

 
          
Christian
met her eyes. Ann’s eyes danced like spiders; they gleamed, empty of reason,
She had not looked that way a month ago at the Sacred Yew. Already Zillah’s
essence was infecting her as it had infected Jessy.

 
          
He
could tell her the truth. That Zillah was of another race, a race whose seed
was bloody poison. That Zillah’s baby would rip her apart inside and she would
die as Jessy had died fifteen years ago, her thighs sticky with blood, her eyes
rolled back silver-rimmed in her head. Yes, he might tell her all that. She was
already mad enough to believe it. But if she knew what danger she was in, she
might tell someone else. She might convince someone. And that would endanger
Nothing, would endanger Zillah and the others. The young, the fine, the fire of
a dying race. No.

 
          
He
could not betray them.

 
          
“You
must get rid of it because he will leave you,” Christian said lamely.

 
          
“You’ll
be alone.”

 
          
“I’ll
follow them wherever they go,” Ann said. “I’ll follow Zillah.”

 
          
Her
hair hung loose about her face, straggling, bright as flames. She was just a
girl. A girl like Jessy, a human girl who should have a life without fear or
pain caused by the whims of others. A girl who should have healthy children
that she could live to care for. Babies she could nurse at her breast; babies
that would not feed upon the tissue of her innards.

 
          
Christian
knew he could not let the others leave him a second time. He could not watch
that black van disappear down the road and wonder whether he would ever see it
again. If they left Missing Mile, he would follow them. They would protect him
from Wallace Creech. And if Ann followed too, perhaps he could convince her.
Perhaps there would be some way to keep her from giving birth to another of
Zillah’s beautiful, deadly children.

 
          
“They’ll
go to New Orleans,” he told her. “To the French Quarter.” There; it was done.

 
          
She
might follow them; she might find them. She might not.

 
          
Christian
turned away toward the trailer. He did not look back at the girl who stood by
the rosebushes, the girl with funereal black lace tied in her bright hair. The
girl who even though there was no physical resemblance, none at all, reminded
him so strongly of Jessy fifteen years ago.

 
          
The
same bewitched light shone in her eyes.

 
          
After
they left the Halloween party, Ghost drove to Ann’s house. Her
Datsun
was not parked in the driveway, but her father’s red
Buick was. Ghost didn’t want to talk to Simon
Bransby
,
not tonight, not about all this. And he could see that there was no light on in
Ann’s corner room.

 
          
Ghost
swung past the Greyhound station over by the old Farmer’s Hardware store.

 
          
Ann’s
car was in the parking lot, but it already looked abandoned. The bus station
was dark; no one sat on the lone bench out back. The southbound night bus came
through Missing Mile every night at 10:05. It was long gone.

 
          
Ghost
drove back to Burnt Church Road, grabbed their toothbrushes and Steve’s bag of
pot, and pointed the car out of town. He could think of nothing better to do.
New Orleans, Steve had said, and Ann was probably headed there too.

 
          
Steve
slumped against the passenger door, his breathing deep, heavy, exhausted.

 
          
He
was in no shape to answer questions. So Ghost took N.C. 42 south out of Missing
Mile without looking over his shoulder. He knew he would be back. He and Steve
could travel anywhere, but they always came back to Missing Mile.

 
          
The
road made him as nervous as a racehorse. He wasn’t good at driving, not like
Steve.

 
          
Driving
was in Steve’s blood. But the highway billowed and writhed before Ghost’s eyes;
stars glittered in the rearview mirror; the moon dodged shreds of pale cloud.
The night was dark, then bright, then dark again.

 
          
Halloween
night. A bad time to travel. What might be keeping pace with the T-bird?

 
          
What
strange eyes might mark the car’s passage? Ghost kept the windows cranked tight
shut, kept his nostrils flared for trouble.

 
          
As
he drove past
Miz
Catlin’s place, Ghost saw a lone
candle flickering in the front window.
Miz
Catlin
knew enough to stay inside tonight, her small fire warming the good spirits and
keeping the bad ones away.

 
          
With
a longing that ached in his bones, Ghost wished he were asleep between the crisp
faded sheets of
Miz
Catlin’s guest bed. He had spent
so many childhood nights in that bed, napping, waking and tossing, twining his
fingers in his hair and trying to hear the quiet conversations of
Miz
Catlin and his grandmother in the next room. Sometimes
they spoke of things he couldn’t understand, things that frightened him, names
he could never recall when clear sunlight spilled through the windowpanes the
next morning.

 
          
Astaroth
. He thought he remembered that. Or was it
asafoetida
? Sometimes, as old women will, they spoke of
recipes and grown children and husbands strayed or buried. Still Ghost had
listened rapt, turning over each word he could hear, keeping it like a
jewel-colored pebble or a broken blue eggshell somewhere in his mind.