The Tale of the Body Thief (15 page)

I couldn’t continue. I was too dazzled by the possibility.

“How do you mean, tried?”

I described the peculiar sensations—the vibration and the constriction, the sense that I was being forced quite literally out of my physical self.

He didn’t reply to what I’d said, but I could see the effect this had upon him. He sat motionless, his eyes narrow, his right hand half closed and resting idly beside his plate.

“It was an assault upon me, wasn’t it? He tried to get me out of my body! Maybe so that he could get in. And of course he couldn’t do it. But why would he risk mortally offending me with such an attempt?”

“Has he mortally offended you?” David asked.

“No, he’s merely made me all the more curious, powerfully curious!”

“There you have your answer. I think he knows you too well.”

“What?” I heard what he said but I couldn’t reply just now. I drifted into remembering the sensations. “That feeling was so strong. Oh, don’t you see what he’s doing? He’s suggesting that he can switch with me. He’s offering me that handsome young mortal frame.”

“Yes,” David said coldly. “I think you’re right.”

“Why else would he stay in that body?” I said. “He’s clearly very uncomfortable in it. He wants to switch. He’s saying that he can switch! That’s why he’s taken this risk. He must know it would be easy for me to kill him, squash him like a little bug. I don’t even like him—the manner, I mean. The body is excellent. No, that’s it. He can do it, David, he knows how.”

“Snap out of it! You can’t put it to the test.”

“What? Why not? You’re telling me it can’t be done? In all those archives you have no records … ? David, I know he’s done it. He just can’t force me into it. But he’s switched with another mortal, that I know.”

“Lestat, when it happens we call it possession. It’s a psychic
accident! The soul of a dead person takes over a living body; a spirit possessing a human being; it has to be persuaded to let go. Living people don’t go around doing it deliberately and in concerted agreement. No, I don’t think it
is
possible. I don’t think we do have any such cases! I … ” He broke off, clearly in doubt.

“You know you have such cases,” I said. “You must.”

“Lestat, this is very dangerous, too dangerous for any sort of trial.”

“Look, if it can happen by accident, it can happen this way too. If a dead soul can do it, why not a living soul? I know what it means to travel outside my body. You know. You learned it in Brazil. You described it in fine detail. Many, many human beings know. Why, it was part of the ancient religions. It’s not inconceivable that one could return to another body and hold on to it while the other soul struggles in vain to recapture it.”

“What an awful thought.”

I explained again about the sensations and how powerful they had been. “David, it’s possible he stole that body!”

“Oh, that’s just lovely.”

Again, I was remembering the feeling of constriction, the terrific and strangely pleasurable feeling that I was being squeezed out of myself through the top of my head. How strong it had been! Why, if he could make me feel that, surely he could make a mortal man rise out of himself, especially if that mortal man did not have the slightest idea of what was being done.

“Calm yourself, Lestat,” David said a little disgustedly. He laid his heavy fork upon the half-empty plate. “Now think this through. Perhaps such a switch could be achieved for a few minutes. But anchoring in the new body, remaining inside it, and functioning day in and day out? No. This would mean functioning when you are asleep as well as awake. You’re talking about something entirely different and obviously dangerous. You can’t experiment with this. What if it worked?”

“That’s the whole point. If it works, then I can get into that body.” I paused. I could scarcely speak it and then I did. I said it. “David, I can be a mortal man.”

It took my breath away. A moment of silence passed as we stared at each other. The look of vague dread in his eyes did nothing to still my excitement.

“I’d know how to use that body,” I said, half in a whisper. “I’d
know how to use those muscles and those long legs. Oh, yes, he chose that body because he knew I would consider it a possibility, a real possibility—”

“Lestat, you can’t pursue this! He’s speaking of trading here, switching! You can’t let this suspect individual have your body in return! The idea’s monstrous. You inside that body is quite enough!”

I fell into stunned silence.

“Look,” he said, trying to bring me back to him. “Forgive me for sounding like the Superior General of a religious order, but this is something you simply cannot do! First off, where
did
he get that body? What if he did, in fact, steal it? Surely no handsome young man cheerfully gave it over without so much as a qualm! This is a sinister being, and must be recognized as such. You can’t deliver to him a body as powerful as your own.”

I heard all this, I understood it, but I couldn’t absorb it. “Think of it, David,” I said, knowing that I sounded mad and only barely coherent. “David, I could be a mortal man.”

“Would you kindly wake up and pay attention to me, please! This is not a matter of comical stories and Lovecraftian pieces of gothic romance.” He wiped his mouth with his napkin, and crossly slugged down a swallow of wine, and then reached across the table and took hold of my wrist.

I should have let him lift it and clasp it. But I didn’t yield and he realized within a second that he could no more move my wrist away from the table than he could move that of a statue made of granite.

“That’s it, right there!” he declared. “You can’t play with this. You can’t take the risk that it will work, and this fiend, whoever he is, will have possession of your strength.”

I shook my head. “I know what you’re saying, but, David, think of it. I have to talk to him! I have to find him and find out whether this can be done. He himself is unimportant. It’s the process that’s important. Can it be done?”

“Lestat, I’m begging you. Don’t explore this any further. You’re going to make another ghastly mistake!”

“What do you mean?” It was so hard to pay attention to what he was saying. Where was that wily fiend right now? I thought of his eyes, how beautiful they would be if
he
were not looking out of them. Yes, it was a fine body for this experiment! Wherever
did
he get it? I had to find out.

“David, I’m going to leave you now.”

“No, you’re not! Stay right where you are, or so help me God I’ll send a legion of hobgoblins after you, every filthy little spirit I trafficked with in Rio de Janeiro! Now listen to me.”

I laughed. “Keep your voice down,” I said. “We’ll be thrown out of the Ritz.”

“Very well, we’ll strike a bargain. I’ll go back to London and hit the computer. I’ll boot up every case of body switching in our files. Who knows what we’ll discover? Lestat, maybe he’s in that body and it’s deteriorating around him, and he can’t get out or stop the deterioration. Did you think of that?”

I shook my head. “It’s not deteriorating. I would have caught the scent. There’s nothing wrong with that body.”

“Except maybe he stole it from its rightful owner and that poor soul is stumbling around in
his
body, and what that looks like, we haven’t a clue.”

“Calm down, David, please. You go on back to London, and hit the files, as you described. I’m going to find this little bastard. I’m going to hear what he has to say. Don’t worry! I won’t proceed without consulting you. And if I do decide—”

“You won’t decide! Not until you talk to me.”

“All right.”

“This is a pledge?”

“On my honor as a bloodthirsty murderer, yes.”

“I want a phone number in New Orleans.”

I stared at him hard for a moment. “All right. I’ve never done this before. But here it is.” I gave him the phone number of my French Quarter rooftop rooms. “Aren’t you going to write it down?”

“I’ve memorized it.”

“Then farewell!”

I rose from the table, struggling, in my excitement, to move like a human. Ah, move like a human. Think of it, to be inside a human body. To see the sun, really see it, a tiny blazing ball in a blue sky! “Oh, and, David, I almost forgot, everything’s covered here. Call my man. He’ll arrange for your flight … ”

“I don’t care about that, Lestat. Listen to me. Set an appointment to speak with me about this, right now! You dare vanish on me, I’ll never—”

I stood there smiling down at him. I could tell I was charming
him. Of course he wouldn’t threaten never to speak to me again. How absurd. “Ghastly mistakes,” I said, unable to stop smiling. “Yes, I do make them, don’t I?”

“What will they do to you—the others? Your precious Marius, the older ones, if you do such a thing?”

“They might surprise you, David. Maybe all they want is to be human again. Maybe that’s all any of us want. Another chance.” I thought of Louis in his house in New Orleans. Dear God, what would Louis think when I told him about all this?

David muttered something under his breath, angry and impatient, yet his face was full of affection and concern.

I blew him a little kiss and was gone.

S
CARCELY
an hour had passed before I realized I couldn’t find the wily fiend. If he was in Paris, he was cloaked so that I couldn’t pick up the faintest shimmer of his presence. And nowhere did I catch an image of him in anyone else’s mind.

This didn’t mean he wasn’t in Paris. Telepathy is extremely hit or miss; and Paris was a vast city, teeming with citizens of all the countries of the world.

At last I came back to the hotel, discovered David had already checked out, leaving all his various phone numbers with me for fax, computer, and regular calls.

“Please contact me tomorrow evening,” he’d written. “I shall have some information for you by then.”

I went upstairs to prepare for the journey home. I couldn’t wait to see this lunatic mortal again. And Louis—I had to lay it all before Louis. Of course he wouldn’t believe it was possible, that would be the first thing he’d say. But he would understand the lure. Oh, yes, he would.

I hadn’t been in the room a minute, trying to determine if there was anything here I needed to take with me—ah, yes, David’s manuscripts—when I saw a plain envelope lying on the table beside the bed. It was propped against a great vase of flowers. “Count van Kindergarten” was written on it in a firm, rather masculine script.

I knew the minute I saw it that it was a note from him. The message inside was handwritten, in the same firm, heavily engraved style.

“Raglan James.” I whispered the name aloud. Raglan James. I didn’t like the name. The name was like him.

I dialed the concierge.

“This fax system which has just been invented,” I said in French, “you have it here? Explain it to me, please.”

It was as I suspected, a complete facsimile of this little note could be sent from the hotel office over a telephone wire to David’s London machine. Then David would not only have this information, he would have the handwriting, for what it was worth.

I arranged to have this done, picked up the manuscripts, stopped by the desk with the note of Raglan James, had it faxed, took it back, and then went to Notre Dame to say good-bye to Paris with a little prayer.

I was mad. Absolutely mad. When had I ever known such pure happiness! I stood in the dark cathedral, which was now locked on account of the hour, and I thought of the first time I’d ever stepped into it so many, many decades ago. There had been no great square before the church doors, only the little Place de Grève hemmed in with crooked buildings; and there had been no great boulevards in Paris such as there are now, only broad mud streets, which we thought so very grand.

I thought of all those blue skies, and what it had felt like to be hungry, truly hungry for bread and for meat, and to be drunk on good wine. I thought of Nicolas, my mortal friend, whom I’d loved so much, and how cold it had been in our little attic room. Nicki and I arguing the way that David and I had argued! Oh, yes.

It seemed my great long existence had been a nightmare since those days, a sweeping nightmare full of giants and monsters and horrid ghastly masks covering the faces of beings who menaced me in the eternal dark. I was trembling. I was weeping. To be human, I thought. To be human again. I think I said the words aloud.

Then a sudden whispered laugh startled me. It was a child somewhere in the darkness, a little girl.

I turned around. I was almost certain I could see her—a small gray form darting up the far aisle towards a side altar, and then out of sight. Her footsteps had been barely audible. But surely this was some mistake. No scent. No real presence. Just illusion.

Nevertheless I cried out: “Claudia!”

And my voice came tumbling back to me in a harsh echo. No one there, of course.

I thought of David: “You’re going to make another ghastly mistake!”

Yes, I have made ghastly mistakes. How can I deny it? Terrible, terrible errors. The atmosphere of my recent dreams came back to me, but it wouldn’t deepen, and there remained only a evanescent sense of being with her. Something about an oil lamp and her laughing at me.

I thought again of her execution—the brick-walled air well, the approaching sun, how small she had been; and then the remembered pain of the Gobi Desert mingled with it and I couldn’t bear it any longer. I realized I had folded my arms around my chest, and was trembling, my body rigid, as though being tormented with an electric shock. Ah, but surely she hadn’t suffered. Surely it had been instantaneous for one so tender and little. Ashes to ashes … 

This was pure anguish. It wasn’t those times I wanted to remember, no matter how long I’d lingered in the Café de la Paix earlier, or how strong I imagined I had become. It was my Paris, before the Theatre of the Vampires, when I’d been innocent and alive.