Merrick (16 page)

She stood before us, her hand on her hip, the cigarette held high. She looked down at the bottles.

“Yeah, she likes those things!” she said.

Her posture became ever more suggestive, mocking. “And you do like what you see, don’t you, David? She’s just young enough for you. She’s got some of the little boy left in her, don’t she? Great Nananne knew you and what you wanted. And I know you too.”

Her face was full of anger and very beautiful.

“You killed Joshua, didn’t you?” she said in a low voice, eyes suddenly narrow, as if she was peering into my soul. “You let him go on that climb in the Himalayas—.” She pronounced the word as I would have said it. “And you knew it was dangerous but you loved him so much, you couldn’t say no.”

I could say nothing. The pain in me was too intense. I tried to banish all thoughts of Joshua. I tried not to think of the day when they had brought his body back to London. I tried to focus on the girl before me.

“Merrick,” I said with all the strength I could muster, “Merrick, drive her out.”

“You want me, and so do you, Aaron,” she continued, the grin making her cheeks supple, her face flushing. “Either one of you’d tack me to that mattress if you thought you could.”

I said nothing.

“Merrick,” said Aaron loudly. “Cast her out. She means you no good, darling, cast her out!”

“You know what Joshua was thinking about you when he fell off that cliff?” she said.

“Stop it!” I cried.

“He was hating you for sending him, hating you for saying yes, he could go!”

“Liar!” I said. “Get out of Merrick.”

“Don’t you shout at me, Mister,” she blazed back. She glanced down at the broken glass and tapped her ashes into it. “Now let’s just see about fixing her good.”

She took a step forward, right into the mess of broken glass and overturned bottles that lay between us.

I advanced on the figure.

“Stay back.”

I seized her by the shoulders and forced her backwards. But it took all of my strength. Her skin was moist with sweat, and she squirmed out of my grasp.

“You don’t think I can walk on glass in bare feet?” she said right in my face as she struggled to resist me. “You stupid old man,” she went on, “now why would I want to cut Merrick’s foot?”

I took hold of her, crushing the glass under my shoes.

“You’re dead, aren’t you, Honey in the Sunshine? You’re dead, and you know it, and this is all the life you can get!”

For one moment the beautiful face went blank. The girl appeared to be Merrick. Then the eyebrows were raised again. The lids assumed their languid expression, making the eyes glitter.

“I’m here and I’m staying here.”

“You’re in the grave, Honey in the Sunshine,” I answered. “That is, the body you want is in the grave, and all you’ve got is a vagrant spirit, now isn’t that so!”

A look of fear flittered across her expression, and then the face hardened once more, as she freed herself from my hands.

“You know nothing about me, Mister,” she said. She was baffled, as spirits often are. She couldn’t keep the cocky expression on Merrick’s face. Indeed, the whole body shuddered suddenly. The true Merrick was struggling.

“Come back, Merrick, throw her off, Merrick,” I said. I stepped forward once again.

She moved back and towards the foot of the high bed. She turned the cigarette in her hand. She meant to jab me with it.

“You bet your life I do,” she said, reading my thoughts. “I wish I had something I could really hurt you with. But I guess I’ll have to settle for hurting her!”

She glanced about the room.

It was all I needed. I advanced on her and caught her by the shoulders, desperate to keep hold of her in spite of the sweat that covered her and her writhing to escape.

She shrieked. “You stop that, lemme go!” And she managed to grind the cigarette into the side of my face.

I reached for her hand, grabbed it and twisted it until she dropped the cigarette. She slapped me hard, so that for one moment I felt faint. Nevertheless, I held on to her slippery shoulders.

“That’s it,” she cried. “Hurt her, break her bones, why don’t you just do that? Think it will make Joshua come back? Think he’ll be any older for you, David, think it will make everything right?”

“Get out of Merrick!” I shouted. I could still hear the broken glass under my shoes. She was perilously close to it. I shook her hard, her head flopping from side to side.

She convulsed, wrenching free, and again there came a slap of awesome strength that all but knocked me off balance. For one split second I couldn’t see.

I lunged at her and lifted her under the arms and threw her back on the bed. I knelt on the bed over her, gripping her still. She was struggling to reach my face.

“Let her go, David,” Aaron cried out behind me. And I heard the voice of Mary, suddenly, that other loyal member, begging me not to twist her wrist so hard.

Her fingers struggled to reach my eyes.

“You’re dead, you know you are, you’ve got no right here,” I roared at her. “Say it, you’re dead, you’re dead, and you’ve got to let Merrick go.”

I felt her knee against my chest.

“Great Nananne, get her out!” I said.

“How dare you!” she screamed. “You think you can use my godmother against me.” She caught my hair with her left hand and yanked at it.

Still I shook her.

And then I drew back, I let her go, and I called upon my own spirit, my own soul to make itself into a powerful instrument, and it was with that invisible instrument that I plunged towards her, striking her at the heart so that she lost her breath.

Get out, get out, get out!
I commanded her with all the strength of my soul. I felt myself against her. I felt her collective power, as though there were no body to house it. I felt her resist. I had lost all contact with my own body.
Get out of Merrick. Go!

A sob broke loose from her.

“There’s no grave for us, you bastard, you devil,” she cried. “There’s no grave for me or my mother! You can’t make me leave here!”

I looked down into her face, though where my own body had fallen—onto the floor or onto the bed—I didn’t know.

Call on God under any name and go towards him!
I told her.
Leave those bodies wherever they lie, do you hear me, leave them and go on. Now! It’s your chance!

Suddenly the strength that was resisting me contracted, and I felt its intense pressure dissolve. For one moment I thought I saw it, an amorphous shape rising above me. Then I realized I was lying on the floor.

I was staring up at the ceiling. And I could hear Merrick, our Merrick crying once more.

“They’re dead, Mr. Talbot, they’re dead, Cold Sandra’s dead and so is Honey in the Sunshine, my sister, Mr. Talbot, they’re both dead, they’ve been dead since they left New Orleans, Mr. Talbot, all those four years of waiting, and they were dead the first night in Lafayette, Mr. Talbot, they’re dead, dead, dead.”

Slowly I climbed to my feet. There were cuts from the broken glass on my hands. I was physically sick.

The child on the bed had shut her eyes. Her lips weren’t sneering, they were stretched back as she continued her plaintive wails.

Mary was quick to lay a thick robe over her. Aaron was at her side. She rolled on her back and made a face suddenly.

“I’m sick, Mr. Talbot,” she said hoarsely.

“This way,” I turned her over, away from the perilous glass, and lifted her and carried her into the bathroom in my arms. She leant over the sink, and the vomit poured out of her.

I was shuddering all over. My clothes were drenched.

Mary urged me to step aside. It seemed quite outrageous to me for a moment, and then I realized how it must have seemed to Mary.

And so I withdrew.

When I glanced at Aaron I was amazed at the expression on his face. He had seen many cases of possession. They are all terrible, each in its own way.

We waited in the hallway until Mary told us we might come in.

Merrick was dressed in a white cotton gown to receive us, her hair brushed to a marvelous brown luster, and her eyes rimmed in red, but otherwise quite clear. She was in the armchair in the corner, under the light of the tall lamp.

Her feet were safely protected with white satin slippers. But all the glass was gone. Indeed the dressing table looked quite fine with only one lamp and all of its intact bottles.

Merrick was still trembling, however, and when I approached her, she reached out and clasped my hand.

“Your shoulders will hurt for a little while,” I said apologetically.

“Here’s how they died,” she said, looking at me and then at Aaron. “They went with all that money to buy a new car. The man who sold it to them picked them up, you know, and he went with them to Lafayette, and there he killed them for the cash they had. He knocked them both hard over the head.”

I shook my head.

“Four years ago, it happened,” she said, going on intently, her mind on her story and nothing else. “It happened the very next day after they left. He beat them in a motel room in Lafayette and put their bodies in that car and drove it into the swamps. That car just filled up with water. If they woke up, they drowned. There’s nothing left of either one of them now.”

“Dear God,” I whispered.

“And all this time,” she said, “I was so guilty for being jealous, jealous that Cold Sandra had taken Honey in the Sunshine and left me behind. I was guilty and jealous, guilty and jealous. Honey in the Sunshine was my older sister. Honey in the Sunshine was sixteen and she was ‘no trouble,’ that’s what Cold Sandra told me. I was too little and she’d come back for me soon.”

She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath.

“Where is she now?” I asked. Aaron let me know he had not been prepared for that. But I had to put the question to her.

For a very long time she made no response. She lay staring, her body shivering violently, and then finally, she said:

“She’s gone.”

“How did she come through?” I demanded.

Mary and Aaron shook their heads. “David, leave her for the moment,” said Aaron as politely as he could. I had no intention of dropping the matter. I had to know.

Again, there was no immediate answer. And then Merrick heaved a sigh and turned to one side.

“How did she come through?” I asked again.

Merrick’s face crumpled. She began very softly to cry.

“Please, Sir,” said Mary, “let her alone just now.”

“Merrick, how did Honey in the Sunshine come through?” I demanded. “Did you know she wanted to come through?”

Mary took a stand to Merrick’s left and glared at me.

I kept my eyes on the shivering girl.

“Did you ask her to come through?” I demanded softly.

“No, Mr. Talbot,” she said softly, her eyes drifting up to me again. “I prayed to Great Nananne. I prayed to her spirit while it was still near earth to hear me.” Her tired voice could barely carry the words. “Great Nananne sent her to tell me. Great Nananne will take care of them both.”

“Ah, I see.”

“You know what I did,” she continued. “I called on a spirit that had only just died. I called on a soul that was still close enough to help me, and I got Honey, I got more than I ever wanted to get. But that’s how it works sometimes, Mr. Talbot. When you call on
les mystères
you don’t always know what you’re going to get.”

“Yes,” I responded. “I know. Do you remember all that happened?”

“Yes,” she said, “and no. I remember your shaking me and I remember knowing what had happened, but I don’t really remember all the time that ticked by while she was in me.”

“I see,” I said gratefully. “What do you feel now, Merrick?”

“Afraid of myself a little,” she answered. “And I’m sorry she hurt you.”

“Oh, darling, for the love of Heaven, don’t think about me,” I answered. “I’m only concerned with you.”

“I know that, Mr. Talbot, but if it’s any consolation to you, Joshua went into the Light when he died. He didn’t hate you when he was falling down the mountain. Honey just made that up.”

I was stunned. I could feel Mary’s sudden embarrassment. I could see that Aaron was amazed.

“I’m sure of it,” Merrick said. “Joshua’s in Heaven. Honey just read all those things from your mind.”

I couldn’t answer her. At the risk of more suspicion and condemnation from the vigilant Mary, I leant over and kissed Merrick on the cheek.

“The nightmare’s over,” she said. “I’m free of them all. I’m free to begin.”

And so our long journey with Merrick began.

10

I
T HAD NOT BEEN EASY
for me to tell this story to Louis, and it was not finished. I had much more to say.

But as I paused, it was as if I had wakened to the parlor around me, and to Louis’s attentive presence, and I felt both immediate comfort and crushing guilt. For a moment I stretched my limbs and I felt my vampiric strength in my veins.

We sat like two wholesome beings together, in the comfort of the glass-shaded lamps.

For the first time since I’d begun the story, I stared up at the paintings along the walls of the room. These were all wonderfully colored Impressionist treasures which Louis had long ago collected and once kept in a small uptown house, where he lived until Lestat burnt that house, and, in reconciliation, begged Louis to come and join him here.

I looked at a painting by Monet—one I’d come to neglect of late due to familiarity—a painting full of sunshine and greenery, of a woman at work on her needlepoint by a window under the limbs of delicate indoor trees. Like so many Impressionist paintings it was both highly intellectual, with its obvious brush strokes, and flagrantly domestic. And I let its stalwart sanctification of the ordinary soothe my suffering heart.

I wanted to feel our domesticity here in the Rue Royale. I wanted to feel morally safe, which of course I would never feel again.

It had exhausted my soul to revisit those times when I was a living mortal being, when I had taken the wet daytime heat of New Orleans for granted, when I’d been a trusted friend to Merrick, for that is what I had been, regardless of what Honey in the Sunshine had condemned me for being—with a boy named Joshua who had lived many, many years before.

As for that matter, Aaron and Mary never questioned me about it. But I knew that neither of them would ever look at me in the same way again. Joshua had been too young and I had been too old for the relationship. And I had only confessed my transgressions—a precious few nights of love—to the Elders long after Joshua was dead. They had condemned me for it and charged me never to let such a thing occur again.

When I’d been appointed Superior General, the Elders had exacted a confirmation that I was well beyond such breaches of morality, and I had given it, humiliated that it had been mentioned again.

As for Joshua’s death, I did blame myself for what happened to him. He had begged me to go on the climb, which itself was not terribly dangerous, to visit a shrine in the Himalayas which had been part of his study in Tibetan lore. Other members of the Order were with him and they came home safe. The fall had been the result of a small but sudden avalanche, as I understood it, and Joshua’s body had not been recovered for several months.

Now as I reviewed these things for Louis, now as I pondered that I had approached the woman Merrick in my dark and eternal guise as a vampire, I felt the sharpest and most profound guilt. It wasn’t something for which I could ever seek absolution. And it wasn’t something that could prevent me from seeing Merrick again.

It had been done. I had asked Merrick to raise Claudia’s ghost for us. And I had much more to tell Louis before the two could come together, and more within myself that had to be resolved.

All this while, Louis had listened without saying a word. With his finger curled under his lip, his elbow on the arm of the couch, he had merely studied me as I recounted the memories, and now he was eager for the tale to go on.

“I knew this woman was powerful,” he said gently. “What I didn’t know was how much you loved her.”

I marveled at his customary manner of speaking, the melting quality of his voice and the way his words seemed barely to disturb the air.

“Ah, well, neither did I,” I replied. “There were so many of us, bound together by love, in the Talamasca, and each one is a special case.”

“But this woman, you truly love her,” he pressed gently. “And I’ve asked you to go against your heart.”

“Oh, no, you haven’t,” I confessed. I faltered. “It was inevitable that I contact the Talamasca,” I insisted. “But it should have been contact with the Elders, in writing, and not this.”

“Don’t condemn yourself so much for contacting her,” he said with an uncommon self-confidence. He seemed earnest and, as always, forever young.

“Why not?” I asked. “I had thought you were a specialist in guilt?”

He laughed politely at this, and then again made a silent chuckle. He shook his head.

“We have hearts, don’t we?” he replied. He shifted a little against the pillows of the couch. “You tell me you believe in God. That’s more than the others have ever said to me. Quite truly it is. What do you think God has planned for us?”

“I don’t know that God plans anything,” I said a little bitterly. “I know only that He’s there.”

I thought of how much I loved Louis, and had ever since I had become Lestat’s fledgling. I thought of how deeply I depended upon him, and what I would do for him. It was the love of Louis which had at times crippled Lestat, and enslaved Armand. Louis need have no consciousness of his own beauty, of his own obvious and natural charm.

“David, you have to forgive me,” he said suddenly. “I want so desperately to meet this woman myself that I urge you on for selfish reasons, but I mean it when I say that we do have hearts in every sense of the word.”

“Of course, you do,” I replied. “I wonder if angels have hearts,” I whispered. “Ah, but it doesn’t matter, does it? We are what we are.”

He didn’t answer me, but I saw his face darken for a moment and then he fell into reverie, with his habitual expression of curiosity and quiet grace.

“But when it comes to Merrick,” I said, “I have to face that I’ve contacted her because I need her desperately. I could not have gone on for long without contacting her. Every night that I spend in New Orleans, I think of Merrick. Merrick haunts me as though she was a ghost herself.”

“Tell me the rest of your story,” Louis prodded. “And, if when you’re finished you wish to conclude the matter with Merrick—end the contact, so to speak—then I shall accept it without another word.”