Poppy Z. Brite - 1992 - Lost Souls (55 page)

 
          
“Let’s
have a look, then.”

 
          
They
tiptoed into Steve and Ghost’s room and stood on either side of the bed.

 
          
There
was a strong smell of blood. Arkady had left no light on, and their eyesight
was not as strong as their other senses, but they did not really need it. They
leaned over the bed and breathed in deep, going past the girl’s odor of sweat,
blood, and sorrow, trying to scent out the pulse of life still beating.

 
          
Then
they looked at each other and shook their heads.

 
          
“This
girl belonged to Ghost, you know,” said the blond.

 
          
“Who?”

 
          
“Ghost!
Don’t you remember? The beautiful dreamer?”

 
          
“Oh!
I didn’t like him. Not our sort. Too …”

 
          
“Too
asexual?”

 
          
“Too
pure,” said the redhead, and they both giggled. But their laughter died as they
stared at the indistinct curled form on the bed. Arkady had been so dry.

 
          
“A
shame.”

 
          
“A
pity. But we have a show to do.”

 
          
What
Arkady had said about the twins’ being musicians was not precisely true.

 
          
They
were dilettantes who welcomed any chance to perform almost any act in public.

 
          
Currently
they had captured the affections of a local band whose Gothic act had failed to
ignite the French Quarter club scene. The guitarist and former singer, Pearl,
was a lovely young woman with opalescent skin, masses of dyed and crimped
blue-black hair, and no hint of a brain in her head. “You’ll inject some life
into the act,” she enthused.

 
          
With
a perfectly straight face, the blond twin had replied, “And perhaps you will
inject some life into us, too.”

 
          
Pearl
and the other members of Midnight Sun had agreed to let the twins front their
act for as long as they wished to. Audiences were enthralled; club owners loved
them. The band particularly liked the fact that the twins never took their cut
of the door. They had no use for money.

 
          
At
the foot of Ann’s bed they embraced. Their brittle hair drifted together; their
eyes glittered silver behind the sunglasses they still wore.

 
          
“Let’s
leave after the show tonight,” the redhead murmured. “Let’s blow this town.”

 
          
“But
Pearl …” The blond had taken a particular liking to the empty-headed,
lush-bodied guitarist.

 
          
“We
can do her later. I don’t care. But let’s leave after that. My darling?

 
          
Please?
“Of course, then, anything you want. But why so suddenly?”

 
          
The
redhead glanced at the bloody hump on the bed. Then he tilted his head back and
smiled into his brother’s silver eyes. His grin was warm, lazy, insouciant,
“Don’t you see what happened to her?” he asked. “Where’s the elegance in that?
This is a trashy town.

 
          
“Too
many damned bloodsuckers here.”

 
          
Out
on the landing Arkady’s fingers still scraped uselessly at the floorboards.

 
          
Flakes
of parchment skin sifted from him with every feeble twitch. “Goodbye, Arkady
dear,” said the redhead unconcernedly.

 
          
The
twins picked up Ashley’s skull at the bottom of the stairs and took it with
them as they left.

 
          
“I
think this is the place,” said Steve.

 
          
They’d
been out since dusk hitting all the Bourbon Street bars they had missed before.

 
          
Now
it was almost midnight, and they were staggering along Decatur searching for
the club Arkady had told them about.

 
          
Steve
backed up, stumbled into the gutter, and stared blearily up at a big black sign
above a set of ironwork doors. The sign was written in enormous Gothic letters
that dripped lurid red blood, the corners decorated with a delicate
spiderweb
motif: PASKO’S.

 
          
Steve
narrowed his eyes, trying to make the swimming letters come together. “Is this
the place?”

       
“I think so.” said Ghost, swaying as a
breeze from the river brushed his face.

 
          
The
breeze was warmer than the night air, and it smelled of oysters and pearls, of
bones, of dark mud. It made him nervous and thirsty. “Um—maybe we ought to walk
down to that big cafe and get some coffee first.”

 
          
“Yeah,
us and a million tourists. Let’s go on in. We can get some more beer.”

 
          
Steve
shoved the doors open and dragged Ghost in.

 
          
The
kid working the door was dressed entirely in black. Somehow Ghost wasn’t
surprised. His skin was so pale that it glowed in the blue light of the club;
his eyes were nearly obscured by smudges of greasy black makeup.

 
          
“Fi’
dollar cover tonight,” he said.

 
          
Ghost
rummaged through his pockets. Things sifted out—leaves, rose petals, everything
but money. The kid’s sneer deepened. He looked like Billy Idol at the end of a
long, rough night.

 
          
There
was a tic in his right eye, barely noticeable but constant. “You fags
gonna
pay or what?”

 
          
He
spoke less with malice than extreme indifference.

 
          
Steve
leaned against the wall and produced a crumpled ten-dollar bill. The kid
snatched it. With courtesy exaggerated to the point of great sarcasm, he waved
them in.

 
          
As
soon as they entered the club, Ghost was struck by the likeness of this place
to the Sacred Yew back home in Missing Mile. It surprised him. The Yew was only
a little hole-in-the-wall, more progressive than most of its kind. But this was
a nightclub in the big city, in the heart of the French Quarter. Ghost had vaguely
expected more glitter, more jazz.
Revellers
in
spangled cat’s-eye masks, maybe, shaking confetti from their hair. But here
were only the same sorts of kids that haunted the Sacred Yew. More of them,
sure, but with the same dark-rimmed eyes, the studded ears, the pale
jewelled
throats. The sweet smell of clove cigarettes was
familiar, and their smoke swirling through blue light.

 
          
There
were differences too.
Pasko’s
served mixed drinks;
Ghost saw mysterious crimson concoctions in fancy plastic goblets full of
skewered fruit and paper parasols.

 
          
And
they had a decent PA here, one that not even Steve would be able to bitch
about.

 
          
Right
now it was blasting Bauhaus at shattering volume. Ghost recognized the grave,
guttural voice of the lead singer.

 
          
Ann
had listened to them. Ghost couldn’t remember the singer’s name or the name of
the album, upon which all the songs twined together to tell a kind of horror
story.

 
          
Nothing
would know. Ghost wondered whether Nothing would be here tonight; all the
children looked like him. Their long dark raincoats or too-big leather jackets
enveloped their fragile bones like shadow. Most of them looked so small, so
frail, ready to break like soap bubbles if you touched them. But in all those
black-smudged eyes lurked a certain hardness, a wall of glass to mask their
terrible vulnerability. Show me what you can, those eyes said. Hurt me if you
want to. I’ve seen it all, or I think I have, and where’s the difference?

 
          
Steve
was already at the bar ordering them a couple of Dixie beers. In the past few
days he had developed a taste for the brand; sometimes he drank it as a chaser
for his whiskey. Ghost would rather have gone to one of the all-night groceries
on Bourbon Street and bought a flask of scuppernong wine. Wild Irish Rose or
Night Train. He liked the syrupy thickness of the wine, and the way the
fermented, rotten-sweet flavor of the grapes melted over his tongue. It
reminded him of the elixirs his grandmother had mixed for him long ago: the
spoonful at bedtime, the tiny liqueur glass that often sat by his plate at
breakfast. He remembered her saying Drink that right down, every drop. That
will stop your cough. That one will put rose petals in your cheeks. And the one
he had drunk most eagerly, the one he now knew had been mostly fruit juice and
sugar-syrup: This one will keep you from growing all the way up. It will
preserve the child in you forever.

 
          
Fruit
juice and sugar-syrup.

 
          
Well,
mostly.

 
          
Steve
was coming back toward him with a dripping bottle in each hand. Ghost reached
out to grab a beer and their fingers touched briefly, and Steve was grinning
his old easy drunken grin, and for a moment it was as if they were back at the
Yew, taking a break between sets, catching a buzz together. For a moment
everything was all right.

 
          
That
was when the band began to play.

 
          
The
Bauhaus singer’s voice plunged from the heights of psychosexual ecstasy to the
sepulchral depths of despair. Then the song cut off as abruptly as if a cancer
had seized its throat.

 
          
There
came a ripple of wooden drums as the band took the stage, and a growling bass …
and then the very air of the club was transfixed by an unearthly,
blood-chilling, double-throated howl.

 
          
From
where they stood near the back of the club, Steve and Ghost could not see the
stage.

 
          
They
glanced at each other when they heard the howl, which vibrated through the
layers of smoke, through the ivory bones of all the children, through the
spray-painted walls of the club.

 
          
As
the first line of the opening song came whispering through the smoky air, the
crowd rippled and parted. Now there was a clear path all the way to the stage,
and Ghost got his first look at Ashley’s lovers. Ashley’s twin lovers.

 
          
He
felt his nerves draw him rigid, taut as wire. His beer slipped from his hand
and fell foaming on the sticky floor. Dimly he was aware of wetness soaking
through his sneakers, of Steve staring at him, saying “What the fuck,” bending
to rescue the bottle of Dixie before it all foamed away. He wanted to reach out
and grab Steve’s wrist for warning, for protection, for the simple feeling of
warm familiar skin under his fingers.

 
          
But
he could not move. He could only stare at the two figures onstage, could only
watch their lips as they began to whisper into their microphones: “Death is
easy …”

 
          
They
hadn’t changed much since the night on the hill up by Roxboro. Since the night
Ghost had dreamed of them. The only difference was the dark glasses both of
them wore, even here in this dim club, in this air thick with smoke like blue
cream. If anything, they were more beautiful than they had been in his dream,
lusher
than they had been up at the hill.

 
          
No
more were they dry and brittle. No more did their skin look as if it might
flake away from their bones at the lightest touch. Tonight their lips shone
purple with rouge, and the ripe insides of their mouths glistened pink. Their
skin was the smooth white of almonds. Their colored silks writhed around them.
They clutched each other with their bird-boned hands and pressed their hollow
cheeks together. Their hair twined together, long strands of ruby-red and
yellow-white like mingling flames. Their faces echoed each other in a
perfection that was at once opulent and dissolute.