Lasher (16 page)

“I don’t know you,” she said, but her voice had no conviction.

He came closer to her. The bones of his face were gracefully sculptured but the skin, how fine and flawless was the skin. He was better than the dime-store Christ, certainly. Oh, more truly like the famous self-portrait of Dürer.
“Salvator Mundi,”
she whispered. Wasn’t that the painting’s name?

“I’ve lost those recent centuries,” he said, “if ever I possessed them, struggling as I did then to see the simplest of solid things. But I claim older truths and memories now, before the time of my Mayfair beauties and their fragile nurture. And must rely as men do upon my chronicles—those words I wrote in haste, as the veil thickened, as the flesh tightened, robbing me of a ghost’s perspective which might have seen me triumph all the quicker and all the easier than I shall do.

“Gifford. I myself recorded the name Gifford. Gifford Mayfair—Gifford, the granddaughter of Julien. Gifford came to First Street. Gifford is one who saw Lasher, don’t I speak the truth?”

At the sound of the name, she stiffened. And the rest of his words, going on and on like a song, were barely intelligible to her.

“Yes, I paid the price of every mewling babe, but only to recover a more precious destiny, and for you a more precious and tragic love.”

He looked Christlike as he spoke, as Dürer had in the painting, deliberately perhaps, nodding just a little for emphasis, fingers pressed together in a steeple for a fleeting moment and then released to appeal to the open air. The Christ who doesn’t know how to make change and has to ask one of the Twelve Apostles, but knows he is going to die on the cross.

Her mind was utterly blank, unable to proceed, to frame a response or a plan.
Lasher
. Her body told her suddenly how frightened of this strange man she was. She had lifted her own hands and was almost wringing them, a characteristic gesture with her, and she saw her own fingers like blurred wings in the corner of her vision.

In a rush of rampant pulse and heat, she could not see anything distinct about him suddenly, only the beauty itself, like a reflection marring the view through a window. Her fear surged, paralyzing her, while at the same instant forcing from her another
gesture. She raised her hand to her forehead; and in a dark obliterating flash, his hand came out and locked itself around her wrist. Hot, hurtful.

Her eyes closed. She was so very frightened that she was not really there for a moment. She was not really alive. She was disconnected and out of time and out of any place; then the fear subsided and rose again, whipping her once again into terror. She felt the tightness and the pressure of his fingers; she smelled the deep warm inviting fragrance. She said willfully, in terror and in rage:

“Let me go.”

“What did you mean to do, Gifford?” The voice was almost timid; mellow; lilting as before.

He stood now very close to her. He was nearly monstrously tall, a man of six and half feet perhaps. She couldn’t calculate; just the right side of monstrous perhaps, a being of slender parts, the bones of the forehead very prominent beneath the smooth skin.

“What did you mean to do?” he asked her. Childlike, not petulant, simply very innocent and young.

“Make the Sign of the Cross!” she said in a hoarse whisper. And she did it, convulsively, tearing loose from him, and beginning again, In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. The words were spoken inside her. Then she steadied herself, and looked him full in the face. “You’re not Lasher,” she said, the word almost dying on her lips. “You’re just a man. You’re a man standing here.”

“I am Lasher,” he said gently as if trying to protect her from the coarseness of his words. “I am Lasher and I am in the flesh, and have come again, my beautiful one, my Mayfair Witch.” Lovely enunciation, careful yet so rapid. “Flesh and blood now, yes, a man, yes, again, and needing you, my beauty, my Gifford Mayfair. Cut me and I bleed. Kiss me and you quicken my passion. Learn for yourself.”

Again there was that disconnection. The terror couldn’t become old, or tedious, or even manageable. Surely a person this frightened ought to mercifully lose consciousness, and for one second she thought indeed she might do that. But she knew that if she did, she was lost. This man was standing there before her; the aroma that flooded her was coming from him. He was only a foot or two away from her now as he looked down at her, eyes radiant and fixed and imploring, face smooth as a baby’s and lips almost rosy as a child’s lips.

He seemed unaware of his beauty, or rather not to be consciously using it to dazzle her, or distract her, to comfort or quiet her. He seemed to see not himself in her eyes, but only her. “Gifford,” he whispered. “Granddaughter of Julien.”

It was as terrible suddenly, as dismal and as endless as any fear in childhood, any moment of disconsolate gloom when she had hugged her knees and cried and cried, afraid to even open her eyes, afraid of the creaking house, afraid of the sound of her mother’s moans, afraid of darkness itself, and the endless vistas of horror that lay in it.

She forced herself to look down, to feel the moment, to feel the tile beneath her feet, and the fire’s annoying and persistent flickering, to see his hands, so very white and heavily veined like those of an elderly person, and then to look up at the smooth, serene Christlike forehead with its flowing dark hair. Sculpted ridges for his sleek black eyebrows, fine bones framing his eyes, making them all the more vivid as they peered out at her. A man’s jaw, giving force and shape to the lustrous close-cropped beard.

“I want you to leave now,” she said. It sounded so nonsensical, so helpless. She pictured the gun in the closet. She had always secretly longed for a reason to use it, she knew it now. She smelled the cordite in her memory, and the dirt of the cement-walled shooting gallery in Gretna. Heard Mona cheering her on. She could feel that big heavy thing dance upwards as she pulled the trigger. Oh, how she wanted it now.

“I want you to come back in the morning,” she said, nodding emphatically as she said it. “You must leave my house now.” She even thought of the medal. Oh, God, why hadn’t she put the medal on! She had wanted to. St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.

“Go away from here.”

“I can’t do that, my precious one, my Gifford,” he said as if singing to a slow-paced melody.

“You’re saying crazy things to me. I don’t know you. I’m asking you again to leave.” But when she went to step back, she did not dare. Some bit of charm or compassion had left his face abruptly. He was staring at her warily, maybe even bitterly. This was like the face of a child, all right, mobile and seductive, and endearing in its quick and abandoned flashes of feeling. How smooth and perfect the forehead; such proportion. Had Dürer been born so perfect?

“Remember me, Gifford I wish I could remember you. I
stood beneath the trees when you saw me. Surely I did. Tell me what you saw. Help me remember, Gifford. Help me weave the whole into one great picture. I’m lost in this heat, and full of ancient hates and ancient grudges! Full of ancient ignorance and pain. Surely I had wisdom when I was invisible. Surely I was nearer the angels of the air, than the devils of the earth. But, oh, the flesh is so inviting. And I will not lose again, I will not be destroyed. My flesh shall live on. You know me. Say you do.”

“I don’t know you!” she declared. She had backed away, but only a step. There was so little space between them. If she had turned to run, he could have caught her by the neck. The terror rose in her again, the absolute irrational terror that he would put his long fingers on her neck. That he could, that no one could stop him, that people did such things, that she was alone with him, all of this collided silently inside her. Yet she spoke again. “Get out of here, do you hear what I’m telling you?”

“Can’t do it, beautiful one,” he answered, one eyebrow arched slightly. “Speak to me, tell me what did you see when you came to that house so long ago?”

“Why do you want me?” She dared to take one more step, very tentative. The beach lay behind. What if she were to run, across the yard over the boardwalk? And the long beach seemed the empty deserted landscapes of horrid dreams. Had she not dreamed this very thing long ago?
Never, never say that name!

“I’m clumsy now,” he said with sudden heartfelt sincerity. “I think when I was a spirit I had more grace, did I not? I came and went at the perfect moment. Now I blunder through life, as do we all. I need my Mayfairs. I need you all. Would that I were singing in some still and beautiful valley; in the glen, under the moon. And I could bring you all together, back to the circle. Oh, but we will never have such luck now, Gifford. Love me, Gifford.”

He turned away as if in pain. It wasn’t that he wanted her sympathy or expected it. He didn’t care. He was anguished and silent for a long moment, staring dully and insignificantly towards the kitchen. There was something utterly compelling in his face, his attitude. “Gifford,” he said. “Gifford, tell me, what do you see in me? Am I beautiful to you?” He turned back. “Look at me.”

He bent down to kiss her like a bird coming to the edge of
a pool, that swift, with the heady beat of wings, and the inundation of that fragrance as if it were an animal smell, a warm scent like the good scent of a dog, or a bird when you take it from its cage; his lips covered hers, and his long fingers slipped up around her neck, thumbs gently touching her jaw and then her cheeks, and as she tried to flee deep into herself, alone and locked away from all pain. She felt a swift delicious sensation spread out in her loins. She wanted to say, This will not happen, but she was caught so off guard by it that she realized he was holding her upright; he was cradling her in his fingers, by her neck, tenderly, and perhaps his thumbs were pressed right against her throat. The chills ran over her, up her back, down the backs of her arms. Lord, she was swooning. Swooning.

“No, no, darling, I wouldn’t hurt you. Gifford, what is my victory without this?”

Just like a song. She could almost hear a beat to it and a melody, the way the words flowed out of him in the darkness. He kissed her again, and again, and his thumbs did not crush her throat. Her arms were tingling. She did not know where her own hands were. Then she realized she had placed them against his chest. Of course she could not move him. He was a man all right, stronger than she without question, and it was vain to try to move. Then the deep thrilling sensation engulfed her, rather like the fragrance, and a lovely spasm passed through her, almost a consummation, except that it promised a great rolling succession of consummations to follow, and when you had that many consummations, it wasn’t a consummation. It was only a continuous surrender.

“Yes, give in to me,” he said, again with childlike simplicity. “You are for me. You must be.”

He released her, and then put his hands on her arms and lifted her tenderly off the floor. Next she knew she was lying on it, on the cold tile, and her eyes were open and she could feel and hear him ripping her wool stockings, and she wondered if the sweater wasn’t scratchy and rough. What was it like to embrace someone in a sweater that was so thick and rough? She tried to speak, but the fragrance was actually sickening her, or disorienting her, maybe that was more truly it. His hair fell down on her face with delicious silkiness.

“I won’t do this,” she said, but her voice sounded distant and without authority, or any power at all to speak to her own self. “Get away from me, Lasher, get away from me. I’m telling
you. And Stella told Mother…” The thought was gone, just gone. An image flashed into her mind, an image from long ago of the teenaged Deirdre, her older cousin, high in the oak, leaning back, lids shut, hips thrust forward beneath her little flowered dress, the look of Bad Thoughts and Evil Touches, the look of ecstasy! And she, Gifford, had been standing beneath the tree, and she had seen the dim outline of the man, the flash of the man, and the man had been with Deirdre.

“Deliver us from evil,” she whispered.

In all her forty-six years, only one man had ever touched Gifford like that, or like this—only one man had ever torn off her clothing, in jest or clumsiness, ever forced his organ inside her, and kissed her throat. And this was flesh, no ghost, yes, flesh. Came through. I can’t. God help me.

“Angel of God, my guardian dear…” Her own words fell away from her. She had not consented, and then the horrible realization came to her that she had not fought. They would say she had not fought. There was only this hideous passivity, this confusion, and her trying to get a grip, and to push against his shoulder, with the palm of her hand sliding against the smooth wool of his coat, and his coming inside her violently as she herself felt the climax sweep over her, carrying her near to darkness and near to silence and near to peace.

But not quite.

“Why? Why are you doing this?” Had she spoken aloud? She was drifting and dizzy and full of sweet and powerful sensations, sensations like the scent and the powerful stride of his organ inside her, the pumping against her that felt so natural, so thorough, so good! She thought it had stopped and that she was turning over on her side, but then she realized she hadn’t moved at all. He was entering her again.

“Lovely Gifford,” he sang. “Fit to be my bride in the glen, in the circle, my bride.”

“I think, I think you’re hurting me…” she said. “Oh God! Oh Mother. Help me. God. Somebody.”

He covered her mouth again as once more the hot flood of semen came into her, spilling over and out and leaking down beneath her, and the sweet soft enchanting sensations lifted her and tossed her from one side to the other.

“Help me, somebody.”

“There isn’t anybody, darling. That’s the secret of the universe,” he said. “That is my theme, that is my cry. That is my
message. And it feels so good, doesn’t it? All your life you’ve told yourself it wasn’t important…”

“Yes…”

“That there were loftier things, and now you know, you know why people risk hell for this, this flesh, this ecstasy.”

“Yes.”