The Vampire Tapestry (13 page)

* * *

Silence. With great effort he opened his eyes. He lay alone on the floor of the cell. The gate was open. After a long, blank time he noticed sounds of locks clicking. Roger called him. He could find no strength to answer. Roger started down the hall, still calling. Then his voice ceased uncertainly, his footsteps paused, retreated, returned more softly. Turning his head, Mark could see Roger hovering outside the gate, carrying the length of lead pipe in his hand.

“Look out,” Mark said. Only no sound came out of him.

“Mark?” Roger whispered. “Oh, my God—”

A shadow glided from the doorway of Mark’s bedroom and a hand reached out and closed on Roger’s throat. The lead pipe thumped to the floor. As Roger folded the vampire caught him, swayed, slid down against the wall, holding him.

Mark struggled to sit up.

In the hallway Weyland sat cross-legged. He had pulled Roger’s upper body into his lap and wrapped his lean arms around Roger so that Roger’s arms were caught to his sides. The striped blue shirt that Roger wore was torn open down the front. Roger’s head hung back nearly to the floor. Weyland leaned deeply over him, chest to chest, mouth pressed up under Roger’s jaw, lips fastened to Roger’s throat. He was drinking not in some blissful dream but fiercely, ravenously, breathing in long, grateful gasps between swallows.

Roger’s eyelids fluttered. Roger emitted one faint cry and turned his head painfully, flinching from the vampire’s grip. The heels of Roger’s shoes scratched feebly at the floor. Weyland pressed closer, working his jaw to shift and improve his hold, and he drank and drank. Now Roger’s legs sagged limp as ropes. Paralyzed with weakness and horror, Mark kept thinking,
This is
Roger this is happening to, my Uncle Roger, this is Roger
.

At last the vampire raised his head and met Mark’s gaze. In Weyland’s haggard face the eyes glittered keen as stars. He got up abruptly, dumping Roger out of his lap like a brightly wrapped parcel from which the gift has been removed.

“You killed him,” Mark moaned.

“Not yet.” Weyland had the lead pipe in his hands. As Mark lurched to all fours, trying to rise, he saw Weyland cock the pipe like a golfer prepared to swing.

“No!” he cried.

“Why not?” The vampire paused, looking at Mark.

Seconds seemed to spin out endlessly. Weyland had not moved. Now he straightened and said, “Very well. You’ve bought the right. It was as good as paying money.” He put aside the pipe and stepped over Roger and into the tiny room. His long hands descended and gripped Mark’s shoulders. Mark tried to twist free, panic rising. He had no strength, and the vampire was astonishingly, appallingly strong.

“Please,” Mark wailed.

“Get up.” The lean fingers dragged him to his feet. “Where does that bedding go? The cot? Put the pillows and the blanket away.” Mark moved sluggishly to obey, feeling dazed and drowned. Weyland set about gathering up the cot and brought it out to be stowed at the back of the hall closet. “Broom and dustpan,” he said. “Shopping bag. Paper towels.”

They cleaned up. In the cramped bathroom every surface was wiped down. Toilet articles, used paper towels and Weyland’s dirty laundry went into the shopping bag. Weyland swept. He carried out the dustpan, stepping over Roger’s inert form as if over a log of wood.

Stumbling in his wake, Mark stopped there, staring at Roger, who lay sprawled face-down on the floor. Weyland said, “No need to worry about your excitable uncle. He’ll live.” He pulled the gate shut behind him, and the lock clicked on the empty room.

Mark trailed after Weyland up the hall and through the dark living room. In the brightness of Roger’s bedroom, the vampire flung open the wall-length closets. Mark sat slumped on the bed while Weyland chose a short-sleeved shirt of cream white polyester. The rest were clearly impossible: Roger’s clothes were sized to a smaller frame.

Weyland glanced at the bedside clock and said, “Wait.”

Blearily Mark saw that the hands showed eight o’clock. Weyland had time to freshen up. After a while he emerged from the bathroom looking very much the man of his book jacket photograph. Shaven, washed, brushed, the rumpled slacks neatened by one of Roger’s belts, he was imposing enough so that the bedroom slippers on his feet were scarcely noticeable.

“My things,” he said. “Fetch them.”

Mark got the paper bag and gave back the knife. Cards, pencils, even paper clips, Dr. Weyland slipped it all into his trouser pockets. “That seems to be everything I came with, minus a few coins.” Then he said, “Roger keeps money in the house.”

Mark was only distantly sorry for Roger now. He was absorbed in getting his exhausted body to move. He went into the kitchen, opened the oven door, and pulled out the money box. Dr. Weyland took all the bills and change without counting. “Put the box back. If there’s anything that you want from your room, go and get it.”

Mark thought of the plans for Skytown, the shelves of books, the comfortable messiness, all empty of comfort now. He thought of Roger lying in the hall, and he had an impulse to go and help, to do something—but what he could do for Roger was already done. Anything more would be up to somebody else.

He shook his head.

“Come, then. Quickly.”

It was cool outside. Dr. Weyland was slightly unsteady in mounting the steps of the areaway. On the sidewalk he stopped. “God damn it. My eyeglasses.”

Mark sat on the steps with the shopping bag and waited for him. Trying to run away would be stupid: he could barely walk.

The long shadow fell across him. “Ah,” Dr. Weyland breathed, head up, tasting the breeze from the west.

“The river.”

They walked toward Riverside Drive. Dr. Weyland’s hand rested firmly on Mark’s shoulder.

“You were only pretending,” Mark said.

“Not at all,” snapped Dr. Weyland. “I pretended nothing: no stoicism, no defiance, nothing.” Broodingly he added, “I left the truth of my condition open to you, in hopes of saving my life—but I was sure I had lost, because of that one who died. I was sure. You would budge only so far, and I needed to push you so much further.”

They started over the damp grass toward the promenade beside the water. River-smell enveloped them.

“I thought you were dying,” Mark whispered.

“I was,” came the low reply.

“That was real, when you drank—your own—” Mark shuddered.

“Oh yes, that was real. The great temptation has always been just that. It tasted good; you can’t know how good it was.” The hand on Mark’s shoulder tightened for an instant. “If you hadn’t stopped me...I was so hungry...”

They crossed the pavement and stopped at the rail. There was a rustle of rats on the wet rocks below. Dr. Weyland turned to watch a trio of evening joggers patter past.

He said, “Your young blood restored me. Even so, I could only manage Roger because of his excellent lesson in producing unconsciousness with the pressure of a finger. There’s always something new to learn. Needless to say, I never studied lifesaving.”

Mark looked across at Jersey, spangles of light above the black, oily water. Tears welled in his eyes, and his breath broke into sobs.

“Stop snuffling,” Dr. Weyland said irritably. “You’ll attract attention. There’s nothing the matter with you. As Roger correctly deduced, I am not contagious. I did you no serious damage and Roger will recover, thanks to you. You saved his life even before you spoke up for him, just by dulling the edge of my need.”

All Mark’s control was gone. His whole body shook with the force of his crying. The vampire added sharply, “I told you to stop that. You have work to do. You must use your fertile imagination to design a story for your mother, something to explain your sudden return from Roger’s and whatever else may come out of all this. You did Skytown; you can do this.”

“You’re lying,” Mark blubbered. “You’re just going to throw me in the river anyway, so I can’t tell.”

There was a brief, considering pause. “No,” said Dr. Weyland at last. “Corpses lead to questions. Besides, killing you would make no difference. Many people know about me now, although without my physical presence the authorities are unlikely to believe any gossip they may hear.

“You must simply go back to your parents, play the innocent, let them think Roger tried to turn you on or whatever other fiction will serve. You live in a culture that treats childhood as a disadvantage; make a strength of that weakness. Sulk, whine, run away a few times if they press you. You won’t be so foolish as to speak of me at all, unless you wish to spend the remainder of your adolescence in analysis.”

Two women came by, walking their dogs. One of the women gave Dr. Weyland a tiny smile in passing. Mark looked up at him, saw the predatory profile in the lamplight, the intent eyes thoughtfully following the women. He felt tired, chilly, abandoned. Furtively, he wiped his nose on the front of his shirt. His arm ached faintly where the vampire had drunk. To have someone spring on you like a tiger and suck your blood with savage and single-minded intensity—how could anybody imagine that was sexy? He would never forget that moment’s blinding fear. If sex was like that, they could keep it. The two of them were alone for the moment. Dr. Weyland turned and slung the shopping bag into the river. It bobbed, swirled round slowly twice, and sank.

Mark said, “Are you going to go after Alan Reese?”

“No. When he is dead, I will still be alive. That suffices.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Begin again,” Dr. Weyland said grimly. “Unless I can invent some tale to keep my present identity alive and useful. I have my own imagining to do, and then work, a great deal of work. How do you get back to your mother’s from here?”

There came no inner recoil. The terrors of home were gone, burned away by the touch of something ancient and wild beyond the concerns of this city. “I take the subway,” Mark said.

“Have you money?”

He felt in his jeans pocket. He had Carol Kelly’s payment. “Yes.”

“Of course—the school scribe has his earnings, and a good thing; I need all that I have. My God, even this rank, filthy river smells wonderful after that foul cupboard of a room!”

He was looking past Mark up the river, turning to sweep his gaze along the bridge to the north and down the lamplit mouths of the streets along the Drive. There was an eagerness to the lift of his head that made Mark think he might simply stride off without another word, so clear was Dr. Weyland’s impatience to be away, once more free and secret among men.

Mark shivered, flooded with relief and desolation. Dr. Weyland looked down at him, frowning slightly as if his thoughts had already left Mark behind. “Come on,” he said.

They started back across the narrow park.

“Where are we going?”

“I am walking you to the subway,” the vampire said.

“Hold on,” Floria said. “I know what you’re going to say: I agreed not to take any new clients for a while. But wait till I tell you—you’re not going to believe this—first phone call, setting up an initial appointment, he comes out with what his problem is: ‘I seem to have fallen victim to a delusion of being a vampire.’ ”

“Christ H. God!” cried Lucille delightedly. “Just like that, over the telephone?”

“When I recovered my aplomb, so to speak, I told him that I prefer to wait with the details until our first meeting, which is tomorrow.”

They were sitting on the tiny terrace outside the staff room of the clinic, a converted town house on the upper West Side. Floria spent three days a week here and the remaining two in her office on Central Park South where she saw private clients like this new one. Lucille, always gratifyingly responsive, was Floria’s most valued professional friend. Clearly enchanted with Floria’s news, she sat eagerly forward in her chair, eyes wide behind Coke-bottle lenses.

She said, “Do you suppose he thinks he’s a revivified corpse?”

Below, down at the end of the street, Floria could see two kids skidding their skateboards near a man who wore a woolen cap and a heavy coat despite the May warmth. He was leaning against a wall. He had been there when Floria had arrived at the clinic this morning. If corpses walked, some, not nearly revivified enough, stood in plain view in New York.

“I’ll have to think of a delicate way to ask,” she said.

“How did he come to you, this ‘vampire’?”

“He was working in an upstate college, teaching and doing research, and all of a sudden he just disappeared—vanished, literally, without a trace. A month later he turned up here in the city. The faculty dean at the school knows me and sent him to see me.”

Lucille gave her a sly look. “So you thought, aha, do a little favor for a friend, this looks classic and easy to transfer if need be: repressed intellectual blows stack and runs off with spacey chick, something like that.”

“You know me too well,” Floria said with a rueful smile.

“Huh,” grunted Lucille. She sipped ginger ale from a chipped white mug. “I don’t take panicky middle-aged men anymore; they’re too depressing. And you shouldn’t be taking this one, intriguing as he sounds.”

Here comes the lecture
, Floria told herself.

Lucille got up. She was short, heavy, prone to wearing loose garments that swung about her like ceremonial robes. As she paced, her hem brushed at the flowers starting up in the planting boxes that rimmed the little terrace. “You know damn well this is just more overwork you’re loading on. Don’t take this guy; refer him.”

Floria sighed. “I know, I know. I promised everybody I’d slow down. But you said it yourself just a minute ago—it looked like a simple favor. So what do I get? Count Dracula, for God’s sake! Would you give that up?”

Fishing around in one capacious pocket, Lucille brought out a dented package of cigarettes and lit up, scowling. “You know, when you give me advice I try to take it seriously. Joking aside, Floria, what am I supposed to say? I’ve listened to you moaning for months now, and I thought we’d figured out that what you need is to shed some pressure, to start saying no—and here you are insisting on a new case. You know what I think: you’re hiding in other people’s problems from a lot of your own stuff that you should be working on.