American Gothic (22 page)

34

Therapy

D
R. GLASS LEANED back in his Aeron chair and shut his eyes. The young woman buried her face in his lap, making pleasure sounds deep in her throat.

“This is the best therapy for you. The only way you will ever learn to coexist with your libido.”

The word Candy had used to describe herself—
nymphomaniac
—referred to a diagnosis the psychiatric community had judged obsolete. Rather, the
DSM-IV
had substituted the term
hypersexuality
to describe individuals exhibiting an abnormally heightened level of sexuality. Dr. Glass had trouble with the new term, for who was to say what degree of sexuality was excessive? There was no ultimately useful scale to measure so-called normal desire in human beings. Dr. Glass was highly sexed himself, and there was nothing wrong with him.

“You must explore the boundaries of desire and see where your impulses lead if you ever hope to control them.”

“Why don’t you shut up and enjoy it?” Candy said without lifting her head out of his lap.

Dr. Glass was not in the habit of taking advice from patients, but for once he decided to make an exception.

He watched Ophelia get comfortable in her usual position on the couch, wishing he could join her there.

“You are much more relaxed than you were when we started these sessions.”

“I suppose people like to talk about themselves and their problems. Even me, though I wouldn’t have imagined it.”

“You haven’t exactly thrown inhibition to the wind and told me everything.”

“No,” she said, smiling to herself, “but I’ve told you a lot more than I ever expected to.”

“And I have, much to my own surprise, been impressed with your worldview. No doubt you’ve noticed I’ve taken to wearing black.”

Ophelia turned her head toward him and ran her big dark eyes over him in a way that excited him on a level that a slut like Candy never could. Had she noticed his altered taste in clothing? She did not say and Glass couldn’t tell. He could usually read his patients, but Ophelia remained as mysterious and inscrutable as the day they first met.

“Western society has, as you’ve said, developed a pathological aversion to facing death. Aversion is an outward manifestation of fear, and fear indicates subconscious issues that should be addressed. I’m planning a major monograph on the subject for the next APA national convention.

“The sharply focused interest in vampires you share with your friends is noteworthy and has a sociological and psychological significance beyond what most people realize. The force that Jung called the will to power is powerful and openly acknowledged in your darkling coven of a social group. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that this runs counter to the despicable milquetoast character shared by the simpering cowards and politically correct weaklings who have taken over society.”

Ophelia laughed quietly. Dr. Glass took it as a sign of approval. She had never before laughed in his presence. There was a delicious velvet quality to the sound, like moths fluttering against silk.

“But most significant of all is your choice to make blood an object of adoration,” Dr. Glass went on. “Blood has always been a taboo substance. In primitive societies, women are considered unclean during menstruation. They are banished to seclusion in huts set apart from the rest of the clan, the blood making them unclean. The Jews have elaborate rituals to avoid the contamination of blood. But your circle has done something entirely new and unprecedented. You have taken blood, the substance of defilement and contamination, and elevated it to serve as your tribal totem.”

“The blood is the life,” Ophelia said.

“Yes!” Dr. Glass exclaimed. “You are precisely right and the rest of the world wrong. Whether we know it or not, we are all controlled by the language of the unconscious. The things we fear and the things we lust after exist beneath the level of our conscious understanding as symbols and images. It is the aim of psychiatry to study and analyze the unconscious, to learn the vocabulary of the dream mind that controls our waking action, not only to keep us from reenacting psychic trauma in disguised ways, but to unlock our secret hidden powers.”

Glass was leaning forward, his eyes bright, his hands alive with gestures.

“I can hear the message in
here.
” He touched his forehead. “We all can. The messages of the unconscious just keep coming, like a radio signal transmitted over and over again, until finally one day we tune it in and receive the message.

“In olden times, we would go to a priest or a shaman to divine the meaning. Now we turn to psychiatrists, but our job seems to be not so much to free the beast as to drug it into impotent numbness. But I see possibilities in you, Ophelia, possibilities of a knowing I’d scarcely imagined existed.”

Dr. Glass stopped, feeling for a moment a rare hint of uncertainty.

“Why are you smiling?”

“You’re doing all the talking, Dr. Glass. This is supposed to be my therapy session. Did you have espresso at lunch?”

“I suppose it’s because it’s your last session. The insurance companies put a limit on the number of visits they’ll pay for. After that, they expect psychiatrists to do their work with drugs and a few brief, well-spaced maintenance visits.”

“I refuse to take drugs,” the girl said.

“I understand and respect that. I endorse your position. I don’t want to mute what’s inside you. That’s all the more reason for you to continue your therapy. We’re just beginning to make progress. Your insurance wouldn’t cover the cost, but your father can easily afford it.”

“I don’t think I want to continue.”

“Don’t you think you’re benefiting from our sessions?”

“What I think is that I’m mainly indulging myself and entertaining you. I can tell how amused you are at some of my stories. I only agreed to see you because my counselor and the headmistress at my school insisted on it as a condition of graduation.”

“Most schools would have expelled you for keeping an enemies list, Ophelia. School authorities are extremely sensitive to that sort of thing after Columbine, and rightly so.”

“It wasn’t an enemies list. At least not in that way.”

“Keeping a list of people you hate isn’t a good thing to do, given today’s political climate.”

“I know that now. But it seems ridiculous that they overreacted to something like that. It’s not as if I threatened anybody. Those people all made it plain that they hate me. What difference does it make whether I hate them in my mind or write it down in my journal?”

“On top of the whole Goth thing and the way you withdrew from social activities at the school after your mother died, they took it as a warning sign.”

“Let’s not talk about my mom.”

“Now who is avoiding the subject of death?”

“It’s what I deserve for going to an exclusive private school for the children of San Francisco’s ruling elite. At a regular high school, nobody would have given me a second look. They don’t know what real freaks are at my school.”

“So graduating does matter?”

Ophelia’s shoulders rose off the couch in a slight shrug.

“How did you make out with the admissions people at Smith College?”

“Did my counselor tell you everything?”

Dr. Glass nodded.

“Some things ought to be confidential.”

“And they are, when we talk about them in this office. I’m your doctor, Ophelia. There can’t be secrets between us.”

She had nothing to say to that. He hadn’t begun to penetrate the layers of secrets hiding the real Ophelia, immortal black pearl, from being seen by the world.

“So?” he said.

“So what?”

“So did you get in to Smith?”

“Yes.”

“That’s quite an accomplishment.”

Ophelia had no reply to that.

“It’s something to look forward to, something to plan for, going off to an upper-crust Ivy League college in the East.”

“I don’t think I’m going.”

“Why not? Do you intend to stay here and care for your father? I daresay the only thing that can help him is a detox facility.”

“I have everything I need here in San Francisco.”

“Most young people your age would be looking forward to going away to college and making a life for themselves.”

“Life is overrated. I’ve already told you: It’s death that interests me.”

Dr. Glass smiled to himself. He was hoping she would say something like that.

“You know you need more therapy sessions with me. I can help.”

“I’ll think about it,” she said.

“And if you continue your therapy—indeed, even if you don’t—it would mean very much to me if you would do one small favor for me.”

“Such as?”

“Teach me to drink blood,” Dr. Glass said.

Ophelia turned and gave him an opaque look, her eyes dark and heavily made up with mascara, that filled him with a mad desire almost beyond what he could control.

35

Temptation

“Y
OU UNDERSTAND THAT he is a
real
vampire?” Ophelia said.

Scarlet seemed to be having trouble focusing her eyes. “A real vampire,” she said. “Fucking fantastic. Because I want to become a vampire. I’m tired of this fledgling shit, having to kiss everybody’s ass—not to mention other parts of their anatomy.”

“What the hell,” Ophelia said, and rang the doorbell. It was a calculated risk, but maybe it would work. She had to do something to get Nathaniel Peregrine’s attention.

The porch light came on, followed by the sound of the dead bolt being unlocked and the latch turned. The door opened.

“Good evening, Ophelia.”

Peregrine looked as if he’d been expecting her, although that would have been impossible since she had only settled on her plan when she got to the Cage Club and found Scarlet there, stoned out of her mind on Vicodin, making out with Zeke in the Bondage Room.

“And good evening to you,” Peregrine said, looking down at Scarlet.

The Ravening fledgling giggled and began to teeter on her stiletto heels. Ophelia put an arm around her, to keep her from losing her balance and falling.

“I brought you a present,” Ophelia said, indicating the other girl.

Peregrine’s eyes shifted back to Scarlet for a few moments. Ophelia had seen men look at Scarlet—her real name was Laurel—with open lust or revulsion, for she made a special point of being outrageous. Peregrine, however, did not react to her in any particular way. Ophelia had almost decided he would reject her bait when he invited them into his house.

“The night air is cool,” he said, “and your friend looks chilly.”

The only light in the main salon of the nineteenth-century home came from the fireplace and a single lamp beside a leather armchair. Apparently Peregrine had been reading Shakespeare. The book was left open, spine up, on one arm of the chair. Ophelia wondered what play or poem he was reading.

“Please excuse me,” their host said, and disappeared without explanation.

Scarlet sprawled out on the couch, legs lewdly splayed, playing her role of überslut without even having to try. The black bustier was cut low enough to expose fully half of the dragon tattoo on her breast over her heart. Her bright red hair was all a-fly. She wore a silver ring in the side of her nose and a studded dog collar around her throat. Her skirt did not quite reach to the top of torn fishnet stockings held in place by an old-fashioned black garter belt, like a 1940s pinup model.

Peregrine brought back a silver tray. On it were a carafe of coffee, three cups, and matching silver bowls of milk and sugar.

“I hope you like French roast coffee,” he said as he filled the cups.

“I like French everything,” Scarlet said, her words slurred.

“Scarlet is a fledgling,” Ophelia said to Peregrine. “I told her the quickest way to earn bones in the Ravening is with the help of an experienced vampire like you.”

Peregrine glanced up at Scarlet. “Would you care for cream or sugar, Scarlet?”

“Both,” she said.

“I know you must be hungry, Nathaniel,” Ophelia said. “Even in a city like San Francisco, you have to be careful hunting. It must have been so much easier back in the 1800s, before video surveillance cameras and FBI crime databases. Back then, I would imagine it would be an easy matter for people to simply disappear.”

“I admit that I sometimes wish I could return to an earlier, simpler time.”

Peregrine put the cup and saucer on the table in front of Scarlet. She had settled back into the corner of the couch and closed her eyes.

“There you are, Scarlet.”

The young woman did not move.

“She needs to take better care of herself, Ophelia.”

“She took too many downers,” Ophelia said. “I hope it doesn’t make her blood too tainted for you to drink. Does that sort of thing bother you? If you wait a few hours, her system will start to clean itself out. There’s no hurry. Nobody will be the least surprised if Scarlet doesn’t show up at the house where she’s been staying. They’ll probably be relieved. She’s a real piece of work. But then you can see that for yourself.”

But Ophelia was the one Peregrine was staring at intently. He drew in a slow breath through his nose, almost as if he was savoring the scent of her, smelling things no ordinary mortal could detect.

“There’s certainly nothing contaminating
your
blood, Ophelia,” he said.

“I don’t believe in drugs. Life is bad enough as it is.”

“Nor do I,” he said, sitting sideways on the couch beside Scarlet but not giving any indication he was going to ravish the girl. Indeed, it looked quite the reverse. He reached for an afghan throw draped over the corner of the couch and covered her, the way he might a sleeping child. “Although there was a time when it was different for me. I was given morphine after an injury and became addicted. It was a difficult time. Drugs are to be avoided.”

“Especially when the ultimate drug, blood, is there for the taking.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Ophelia.”

“I know who you are. I know your story. I told you, Nathaniel, I’ve got you dead to rights.”

“And I’ve told you, Ophelia, you’re mistaken. What you suggest is impossible.”

Ophelia got up from her chair and unfastened the dog collar around Scarlet’s neck.

“Look at her, Nathaniel. So young, so warm, so succulent. And perfectly helpless. There are more like her in San Francisco. I can keep you supplied and help clean up afterward, if you’ll do just one small favor for me.”

Peregrine was already shaking his head.

“Make me like you,” Ophelia said. “Turn me into a vampire.”

“Impossible.”

“Free me from my pain.”

“I can’t do that. No one can.”

“Do I ache any less for my mother than you did for your wife and children, after the Confederate raiders burned them to death in your father-in-law’s house in Kansas, where you thought they would be safe while you were off fighting for the Union?”

Peregrine looked stunned, like a bird that had flown into a window, Ophelia thought.

“Of course I know about it. It’s all on microfilm from the old papers. You will never be able to blot out your past. The evidence exists in too many places. If you know where to go and what to look for—why, there it is, Nathaniel Peregrine, believed killed at the Battle of Gettysburg, still alive today. Although I doubt many people would recognize you for what you are. But you can’t hide it from me. I am gifted—or cursed—in that way.”

“Prescient,” Peregrine said dully.

“The very word I prefer. The term
psychic
is demeaning. That word has been ruined by charlatans. I knew what you were the first time I saw you, the same way I knew my mother was going to die even before she realized she was sick.”

“And what do your powers tell you about yourself?”

Ophelia gave the vampire a pained look. “I don’t know everything.”

“I know.”

“I suppose what happens to me depends on you. I’m asking you, begging you, Nathaniel, change me. And if not that, kill me. For a long time I have been half in love with death.”

“That was Keats’s line.”

“A vampire who loves poetry—could anything be better?”

“You have no idea what you ask of me.”

Ophelia was exultant. “You’ve quit denying it. That is progress.”

“Do not taunt me,” Peregrine said, becoming angry. “And do not tempt me. I am not the solution to your problems. I did not come to San Francisco to take up your cross and bear it for you. There is no relief in the thing you ask me to do.”

“I don’t care.”

“Not now, but you would. The only gifts the Change would bring you are loneliness, longing, endless wandering, and more pain. It is not at all what you think.”

“Then drain me dry and save me the trouble of taking my own life.” Ophelia unfastened the top buttons of her antique Victorian blouse and pulled it open and away from her neck. “Surely you cannot refuse such an offer. You must be hungry. Take my blood. Take as much of it as you need. Drink your fill, and free me from the hell I drag with me on this meaningless slog through life.”

Though Peregrine did not move, she saw a strange glimmering light in his eyes. She knew that look. It was the same look she had seen in her father’s eyes the nights he would come from the hospice where her mother was dying and look upon the bottles of whiskey, gin, vodka, and brandy kept on the sideboard in the dining room.

“I offer you my blood, fresh and pure from the body of a healthy female who doesn’t smoke, drink, or take drugs. There are no contaminants in me. Imagine what it will be like to taste me, sweet and intoxicating, the first wine of summer. Is there anything that could bring you more pleasure? And if there is, take that, too. Take whatever you want, Nathaniel. You have the power. I can feel the strength radiating from you—and your desire.”

Peregrine’s lips drew back in a grimace, the blood teeth coming down from their recesses in his upper jaw. Even the best orthodontic fangs some Ravening players wore were but pathetic imitations of Nathaniel Peregrine’s. His fangs were far narrower than mock movie canines, more like those found in a viper than anything mammalian.

Peregrine’s arm shot out but not toward Ophelia. He grabbed Scarlet by the red hair and dragged her to him in a quick, cruel embrace. Her head rolled back as he buried his mouth in her neck. She gasped in pain, in pleasure, and threw her arms around the vampire, pulling him closer.

Ophelia sat there and watched, too fascinated to be enraged that it was Scarlet’s blood he was drinking instead of her own.