LIFE NEAR THE BONE (4 page)

He sighed against her, his strength draining from him as it would if he had been hypnotized and told his limbs were turned to tubes of rubber.

"There is no antidote in Texas. There is no antidote in me. There are no Hosts left on this entire continent, my dear friend. The few of us who are left must prey either on one another or on foreigners who come to his land. We spread the rumors that brought you. Many of us sailed to other shores, some who had the skills flew planes, but the rest, like me, who cannot leave, simply lie in wait for you."

"Noooo," he said, drawing out the word in a whisper of breath. He felt her heat and it reminded him of the emptiness of Miami and of all the state of Florida, how he had not a human meal since he landed. Other vampires he encountered had looked haunted and frail, but none had the power of his one to capture him.

"Yessss," she cooed, sinking her fangs into the carotid and drinking deep while Carmine silently cried for it to be over quickly.

The fangs fastened, his head lay back, and he submitted to the last death. As he slipped from the bounds of his body he knew she had been right all along. She was the authentic antidote, the surcease from hunger and despair. He sighed with the breath of stale air left in his lungs and took the echo of that sigh with him into the blind darkness, stepping away almost happily from a world ravaged and beyond any hope of repair.

THE END

ROSA TWO-COINS

Copyright Billie Sue Mosiman 1998

First published in HORRORS! 365 SCARY STORIES, Barnes and Noble, edited by Stefan Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg, and Tekno-Books.

In the moist twilight of New Orleans, Rosa Two-Coins wandered the streets like a wraith of fog, insubstantial. Some who saw her say she was a flower peddler, holding out nosegays for the tourists to buy. "Just two coins," she was heard to call. "For your ladylove, sir, just two coins."

Some say she wore a nun's habit, and when she paused on the sidewalk near the haunts dealing in sickly sweet liquors, she would bless the people who came and went, holding up her rosary in ne hand against the sky like a talisman, and in the other a tin cup for offerings.

Some called her demon. Some called her saint.

They all knew Rosa was not of his world and, depending on what they believed, either shunned her or sought her out.

On this night of summer mists and sudden showers, when the streets shined like wrinkled foil with reflections of lamplight, Bartholomew wove his way through the French Quarter in search of the mystical Rosa.

Two coins were all he had to his name, having been luckless at the game of chance in this dreadful Crescent City, but he believed firmly that if he found Rosa and paid her the last he owned, his luck would return.

Rosa found him, rather than he finding her. She stepped out from between two cedars near the church steps and said sweetly, "Young master, for two coins I will return your fortune."

Bartholomew withdrew from her, afraid for his life No one had told him that Rosa was a hag with many decades of bitterness written in dark scrawls across her aged face. "I…I need luck, Rosa. I need my luck back or I'll be homeless by morning."

He lay the two coins in her extended palm and saw them disappear. He followed her as she turned. They walked for blocks, past warehouses and closed fruit stands, walked on through the cold rainy night. Finally Rosa ducked into an alley and he rushed after her, not to be cheated of his money. There in the alley was a black door, and behind it he found Rosa squatting before a low hearth of embers.

"This is dead earth, cold and old, and for you, perhaps lucky. Keep it in your pocket and win your fortune, young mister."

Bartholomew hurried away, drew credit on his good name, and played through the night. It was cards, it was dice, and it was the roulette. He could not lose. He began to be cheerful, a laughing, lucky man. Rains came to flood the streets and still he played, amassing more and more winnings. The dealers looked at him askance, the gambling hall's owner came from private quarters and stood by rubbing his chin, watching with a scowl on his face. A woman hung on his arm and cocktails were provided the moment his glass was empty. He laughed and laughed and laughed. His pockets bulged and on the books there was more than he could ever carry on his person. He was indeed rich now. He was the luckiest man alive.

When morning came he had won so much that he asked for a leather bag to carry at least a portion of his winnings. The hall owner scowled more fiercely and gestured his customer be brought whatever he wanted, even a leather bag with a shoulder strap. Bartholomew's ship was sailing at noon and he must hurry, having business up-river. He snatched the bag from an employee's hand, stuffed it with his money, and tipped the boy a gold coin for his trouble.

He forgot all about his promise to Rosa until he had boarded and the ship left shore. The sun was overhead, covered by an overcast of dark gray clouds. It would rain again. He sighed, then smiled craftily. Two thousand! The old hag was mad. Even if he had remembered, he never would have gone through with it.

Before the ship docked again, Bartholomew had said too much about his luck, bragged too often, as happy, lucky people are wont to do.

The thieves found him asleep in his cot and bludgeoned him until his happy face was pulp. It looked like a meat grinder had chewed his head. When the captain found the body, he set into the first landing and called for the authorities.

A day later in New Orleans, Rose sold bouquets of violets on Desire Street. The sun was out once more, causing Rosa to shield her face with black lace s as not to scare off her customers.

Rosa Two-Coins cackled madly, covering her mouth with her hands. When she was done with mirth, she sobered, for she had a living to make. Her eerie voice bawled into the street, "Violets for your ladylove, sir! Just two coins, two coins only for your pretty one, two coins to make you the happiest person alive!"

THE END

Please read on for the opening chapters of my latest supernatural horror novel, BANISHED--available now as an e-book.

BANISHED

By

Billie Sue Mosiman

Copyright 2011 by Billie Sue Mosiman, All rights reserved.

Cover art by Neil Jackson, Copyright 2011

"The Magician rearranges the Universe to make himself the center, the Mystic rearranges himself to find the center."

CHAPTER 1

THE LITTLE DEATH

She could barely breathe she was so hot. She could hear the night birds call and the rustle of her mother’s palm grass skirt as she moved about the small hut. She could see just the light from the flames of the fire in the center of the floor, but she could not make out anything beyond.

She closed her eyes to blessed darkness and wondered when she would die. She knew she would never be well again, never stand and walk, never kiss her mother’s cheek, or feel the comfort of her mother’s loving embrace. She had not lived long, a handful of years, so there was not much to miss. Yet she knew she must fight against death. She must not willingly let it take her.

A blanket of coolness slipped over her bare skin and it was not from the water her mother had been sponging onto her. She tried to reopen her eyes to discover the cause, but her lids were too heavy. She was so hot! The coolness that temporarily enveloped her was not helping. She wished they would carry her to the sea and float her in the waves.

Dark grew darker. Grew to pitch black. Grew to encompass a vast void. She struggled to take a breath. It would not come; her lungs would not obey. She thought,
Death has me. Death has slipped his arms around me and holds me so tightly I cannot breathe.

Faintly she heard her mother’s wails, but she couldn’t lift a hand for her to come near, nor could she whisper the compassion she felt for the loved one she was leaving behind. She couldn’t even say goodbye.

Take me to the sea,
she begged of Death.
Take me from this heat and pain and let me float in the cool frothy waves. I always loved…I always loved the sea.

The heat grew like a malevolent cloud in the darkness until it filled the void. She couldn’t feel her body. She knew she was but a pinpoint of matter, a tiny bit of consciousness floating in the emptiness. It seemed time had stopped or it was moving so slowly it would last forever and nothing for her would ever change.

I’m not ready
, the child complained.
I’m too young.

And then she was swept off into the dark beyond where there was no more thought or heat or life.

She was done with this world.

CHAPTER 2

A NEW TRUE BEGINNING

“Life. A wriggling mass of cells blindly replicating, always in motion, endlessly in search of food. Is that life? They say it is.”

The girl lay dying. Her week-long fever had put her into a coma and though her mother kept bathing her with cool water, her skin felt like hot coals. Though fevered, her light coffee-colored skin shone smooth and beautiful as a river stone in the flickering firelight.

In the little one-room shack made from date palm leaves the heat was stifling. Not one stray breeze made its way through the open doorway. Flies were so thick they congealed the air and had to be batted away constantly from the comatose child.

The mother, frantic about losing her only child, knowing in her heart death stood close with a skeletal arm extended, ran from the hut crying to the night heavens. She sped along the lone path through the jungle to the witch doctor’s hovel and stood outside wailing loud enough to wake the dead.

In her native tongue she told the witch doctor about the dying child and begged for him to save her.

It seemed to take him forever to gather his special feathers, shells, rocks, and sticks tied in bundles with strings of dried pig skin. As the mother raced back along the path to her baby, the witch doctor stayed at her side, pacing her, a pale sickle moon at their backs.

Bursting into the hut where a small fire in the center of the floor burned, grotesque shadows swathed the little girl who lay against the back wall. Both mother and witch doctor knew it was over and done with.

It was true he was renowned across the island as the most powerful witch doctor ever to have lived, but what the woman was asking he thought was surely beyond his powers. He had brought a dead chicken back to life. A dead dog. And once, even a dead panther, just to see if he could. But a human being? He had not dared try. He was not even sure that the gods would allow him that kind of power.

“I will give you anything,” the mother cried. She beat her chest and rolled her eyes. “Anything! Anything!” She was close to madness.

The witch doctor’s countenance darkened, his eyes took on a glow. His gaze left the mother and settled on the child. He stepped closer, two steps. Three. He went to his haunches and studied the girl. She was undeniably the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Her skin was lighter than most islanders, as if it were lit from within by soft white flame. Her nose and lips and eyes and brow were perfection, and the face was shaped like a heart. Her long dark hair was smooth, shiny with whale oil, and it fell in curls like coiled snakes from her scalp. He reached out and trailed his fingers along her cheek. It was cold, so cold. It was a shame she was dead. It seemed to Mujai that the gods were intentionally cruel when children died.

Suddenly, and without knowing how it happened, the witch doctor fell in love with the dead child. If he hadn’t known better, he might have suspected he was under a spell not of his own making. His face softened, his lips parted, and he let out a little sigh. He swiveled on his haunches to face the mother at the hut’s door opening.

She was silhouetted in the firelight, a gaunt figure with clenched hands held before her breasts. He could feel her grief as if it were an extra person in the hut. It loomed over her, a dark, heavy figure bearing down on her thin shoulders.

“You will give anything if I raise her up? Anything? You will even give up your child to me?” He must make sure she meant it.

A look of dawning understanding and then dismay filled the mother’s eyes. She hung her head. Her tears kept falling, drenching her sweaty naked breasts. She had to decide. Bury her child in the cold ground or see her rise up and walk again, alive and well, but belonging to someone else. Belonging to…

“Yes,” she said, jutting out her chin in defiance. “Yes, I told you, yes. Anything. If you must take her, then take her, as long as she is alive again.”

The witch doctor stood and came to the child’s mother. “When I raise her, she will be mine. You understand? Forever mine. I will take her from here and she will live with me. One day, when she is old enough to wed, she will be my bride. Tell me you understand.”