Black Light (25 page)

“Because this is where he will be born, this time. This is where his children live. It is his sanctuary. Not the only one, but a place where his worship is strong.”

I looked incredulous. “Kamensic Village?”

“Why not? This is where the stories come from, Lit. Come on—haven’t you ever noticed anything strange about this place?”

“Yeah.” I shrugged. “I guess so. But normal people live here. My
parents
live here. They have jobs. I go to school. It’s not like they’re out performing human sacrifices or something.”

Axel raised an eyebrow. “Just how normal do you think Kamensic is, Lit? How normal do you think I am?”

He peered down, brushing the hair from my forehead and tracing a circle there. “Walking in the woods and seeing things like you saw, walking into this house and talking to people like Precious Bane and Ralph Casson and me—

“How normal do you think
you
are, Lit Moylan?”

I pulled away. “Look, I don’t care! I
hate
Kamensic, I can’t wait to get the fuck out of here, I
hate
it—”

“You shouldn’t. It protects you, Lit. Just like it protects all of us…”

He pulled the kimono tighter about him and said, “Didn’t you ever wonder about things like that, Lit? Synchronicities? Like sometimes you dream about something and then it happens? Like when you’re thinking about an old song, a song you haven’t heard in years, and then you’re in the car and suddenly it comes on the radio?”

“Well, sure. I mean, yeah, that happens all the time. To me.”

Axel nodded solemnly. “Me too.” He began to sing in a low voice, as though trying to remember the words.

“There is a place called Nysa,

a high mountain,

surrounded by woods…”

He started to pace across the room, head cocked and hands held out from his sides. It was like some clumsily executed dance, and I felt embarrassed watching it, embarrassed to be here at all. Axel was drunk, or worse; the spliced-together bits of films were just another fractured indulgence. Faded figures moved across the screen; there were a few black frames, and then a burning pyre filled the white square. Above it a laughing woman was suspended on a rack, while another woman in modern dress looked on, her expression more bemused than horrified. I could hear the hum of film scrolling through the projector, the slap of Axel’s bare feet upon the stone floor.

“And they will cut you up

into three parts,

And ever since then,

every three years,

men will offer you

perfect hecatombs.”

At the front of the room Axel stopped. He lifted his head, shadows spilling upon him so that his face looked ravaged, no longer the golden death mask but the split skull beneath. His voice sounded cracked and hoarse.

“We, the poets,

begin

and end our singing

through You—

it is impossible without You,

without our memory of You

we cannot voice our sacred song, and

Your children, the poets, perish.”

He fell silent. The screen behind him went white, covered with balloons of magnified dust. From the back of the chapel came the insistent flapping of loose film on the projector.

“Don’t move a muscle,”
commanded Axel. His head snapped forward and he raised his arm dramatically, like the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.

“Page!” he bellowed. His eyes narrowed as he reached into a hidden pocket of his kimono, withdrew a box of Sobranies and lit one, frowning. All of a sudden he looked like the imperious director who had punched out a
Time
magazine photographer on the set of
You Come, Too.
“Get the fucking reel, Page!”

From behind the second-to-last pew a head popped up.

“Got it, got it—” the man yelled in a raspy Bronx accent. “I’m gettin’ it for chrissakes, keep your panties on…”

He clambered over the pew, heading for the alcove where the projector was, its spool of film spinning maniacally. He wore black jeans and a ratty black-and-white striped sailor shirt. From behind he could have been one of my friends, rangy and stoop-shouldered.

But when he reached the projector light splashed across his face and I recognized him. The same man I had seen at Axel Kern’s holiday party when I was twelve, filming an orgy; the same man who had looked at me then, perplexed, and said
You’re early.
Thirtyish, with thinning black hair and a swarthily handsome face, broad cheekbones scarred by acne and a thin remorseless mouth: Page Franchini. Sometime NYU film student, he was Axel’s chief cameraman and general Nursery flunky. He’d followed Axel to Hollywood but had never been able to find work there—he wasn’t union, he wasn’t reliable, he wasn’t even a very good cameraman. I knew him from “Cities of Night” and also from one of his solo efforts, an “experimental” film called
Gravity Train
which was notorious for a thirty-four minute blow-job sequence involving Precious Bane and a man dressed as an Apollo astronaut.

“Well. I’ll see you later, Lit—”

I turned as Axel smiled at me absently. He lifted his hand in farewell, turned and strode toward the door at the front of the chapel. I watched in disbelief as he left, not even bothering to close the door behind him.

“Hey, you.” It was a minute before I realized Page Franchini was yelling at me. “Sweetheart, jailbait, whoever you are—c’mere and give me a hand, huh?”

I swore beneath my breath, stared resentfully at the man fiddling with the projector. He looked up and glared, a cigarette hanging from his mouth. “Come on! I’m not gonna tell your parents you’re making out with their friends—”

“Asshole,” I muttered, but I walked over. The projector was sitting on an upended stereo speaker, surrounded by silver film canisters and cigarette butts and a battered paperback copy of
Sanctuary.

“Okay, you hold this piece of leader here, it’s torn, see, just hold it so I can get the rest of this crap where it belongs—”

He shoved a ragged tail of loose film at me, yanked the reel from the projector and slid it into a can. Then he took the leader, threading it between his fingers as he held it up to the light.

“It’s shot,” he said regretfully. “Ruined. I duped that for him ten years ago.
Juliet of the Spirits.
He wanted a few of the frames for
Saragossa.
That scene when they burn the girl at the stake? There’s, like, six frames of Giulietta Masina in there, totally subliminal, I guess it’s supposed to secretly make you think Axel is Fellini.” He dragged at his cigarette, exhaled and rolled his eyes. “Sure, Axel.”

I picked up one of the opened cans, breathed in the sweetish scent of new film stock. When I looked up, Page was watching me, brow furrowed.

“I remember you,” he said at last. “That party. You were the little girl in the black velvet dress. I was tripping my tits off, I thought you were a hallucination.”

“Maybe I was.”

“Ha ha. No, it’s crazy, I thought you were—” He stopped. “Well, never mind what I thought. What are you, sixteen?”

“Seventeen. I’ll be eighteen next March.”

He dropped his cigarette on the floor and ground it out. “I was your age when I met Axel. First time a guy ever fucked me. Why don’t you be a good kid and go on home, huh?” He reached over and roughly took the film can from my hands. “It just gets old after a while, you know?”

I watched as he began sorting through a box alongside the projector. I felt defensive of Axel, and humiliated that this guy had seen us together. I tried to come up with some retort, finally said, “He’s my godfather.”

“Always a godfather, never a god.”

“He’s just like a really good friend—”

“Oh, please, spare me.” Page put the last of the film cans into the carton, straightened and shook his head. “Look, I don’t know who you are and I really don’t give a flying fuck what you do, sweetheart. But if you’d seen as many pretty little girls as I have, lying on the floor with a spike in their arm or drinking so much they walk out a sixth-floor window—”

He laughed bitterly. “Well, you’d turn right around and go on home to momma.”

“Oh, yeah? Then what are
you
doing here?”

“Me? I’m part of the floor show, sweetheart. I couldn’t leave if I wanted to. He’d kill me.” He reached out, took my chin between two fingers and looked straight into my face. I stared defiantly back at him. “But maybe you’re different.”

He gazed at me, then laughed. “Maybe you’re really a tough cookie, huh?
‘Voûtes êtes vraiment une déguelasse.’”

“What does that mean?”

“Forget it.” He hefted the box of film and cocked a thumb at the back of the chapel. “That your boyfriend?”

I turned to see Hillary standing in the doorway, hands in his pockets and looking hangdog. When he saw me his face lit up.

“Lit!”

I walked over to him. “Hey, where’d you go?”

“Me? You were the one who—”

“Later, kiddies,” said Page Franchini as he edged past with the film carton on his shoulder.

“I’m sorry.” Hillary sighed and put his arm around me. “Look, you want to go home? This is all kind of bringing me down. I’ll drive you back—”

“No. I—I’m supposed to go home with my parents,” I lied.

“Really?” As we went into the corridor Hillary shook his head. “But they already left. I mean, I think they left, it looked like your car. That’s why I was so bummed, I thought you’d gone without me…”

“Oh.” There was an awful hollow feeling in my stomach, and I stammered, “Are—are you sure it was my parents?”

“Well, no, I’m not positive. But—yeah, it looked like Unk. Why?”

“Nothing. I just—well, they didn’t tell me, that’s all.”

“So come on, then. I’ll drive you back.”

I pulled away from him. “No. I don’t want to go. I’m just surprised.”

“Probably they couldn’t find you.” Hillary grinned, pushing the long hair from his face. “I know I couldn’t. Well, okay, if you’re staying, I will, too. Listen, Ali and that guy Jamie said they were going upstairs to find Dunc, he had some hash or something—”

He pointed and I looked down the hallway, frowning. “This isn’t how I came in.”

“Yeah, well, this is how we’re going out. This way…”

He took my hand and we walked down the passage, more brightly lit than the corridor where I’d seen Ralph Casson and Balthazar Warnick. A few people floated by us, giggling blondes and middle-aged couples in formal wear, a very drunken Margot Steiner. When we passed a tall, narrow window I stopped and looked out.

Below stretched the downward slope of Muscanth Mountain, and the black reflection of the lake. Rain gave everything a creepy, urban sheen; made the bare trees look sleek and metallic and the overgrown lawn brittle, as though encased in ice. I could just make out the road snaking down to the village, the rows of parked cars like overlapping scales on a butterfly’s wing.

“Is Jamie done parking?” I asked.

“I think so. He was only supposed to do it till nine or nine thirty.”

“What time is it now?”

“Not that late,” shrugged Hillary. “After midnight.”

“Midnight! It
can’t
be after midnight—”

“Time flies when you’re having fun. Come on, Cinderella…”

We slipped into a stairwell, climbed until we came out onto a wide landing where a chandelier made of deer antlers hung from the ceiling, a hideous thing webbed with dust and dead moths. Only one of the bulbs was working; it made our shadows look shrunken, and did little to dispel my unease when something scuttled across the uneven wood floor.

“Ugh! What was that?”

Hillary laughed. “Wait’ll you see what Kern gave Jamie as a tip. It’s in here, with the rest of the zoo—”

I followed him across the landing. This part of Bolerium looked as though it had gone a very long time without visitors. Dead leaves covered the floor, and acorns. A single window had cracked panes taped over with cardboard, and beneath it a window seat was covered with wet, moldering newspapers. Music pounded from behind a closed door, a reassuring wail of guitars and feedback. Hillary pushed the door open and we entered.

“Greetings, my children,” he announced. “It’s showtime.”

We were in a large room, lit only by an ultraviolet bulb screwed into an ornate fixture in the center of the ceiling, a plaster medallion shaped like a flower. There was a mattress on the floor, covered with pillows and an India-print spread, and a circle of small rocks that glowed with spectral brilliance in the black light: acid green, cyanic blue, sickly chartreuse. A stereo was shoved into one corner, a cheap Kenmore lift’n’play model with a bunch of albums queued above the turntable.

“Hey…” someone said thickly.

One of the pillows moved: Ali. Next to her Jamie Casson sat cross-legged, still in his uniform of tuxedo pants and vest. The sleeves of his white dress shirt were rolled, the shirt unbuttoned so I could see his pale chest, hairless, his skin tinted ghastly blue by the light. His head was tilted back and his eyes closed; his features disquieting, almost disturbing, in repose. There was something poisonous about him: if you cut him his blood would burn you. More acorns and dead leaves were strewn across the floor, drifting atop album covers and soiled clothing.

“Oh, very nice,” said Hillary. He kicked his way through a heap of flannel shirts and bent to retrieve a small envelope folded from a magazine page. He smoothed it open, licked it tentatively, and scowled.

“God damn it.” He looked at Jamie, then tossed the empty packet aside. The floor was covered with them, like spent matchbooks among the acorns. I stooped to examine one of the envelopes, and saw then that they weren’t acorns at all. They were the seed-heads of poppies. Scores of them; hundreds. Not the little dried husks nodding in Kamensic’s gardens, but pods the size of small plums, their skin smooth and slightly moist. I held one up, squinting in the weird blue light, and scored the rounded surface with my fingernail. Thick liquid oozed out.

“Fuckin’ A,” whispered Hillary. He looked at me and shook his head helplessly. “They’re gone.”

I hurried to the mattress, bent until my face was inches from Ali’s. Her breath touched my cheek, cool, scented with lactose and wintergreen. The blue light gave her skin a niveous gleam, as though it had been thickly powdered. Sweat pearled in indigo beads upon her upper lip.