Shadows 7 (22 page)

She must hurry.

As David returns to the bar he sees that they are standing. He leans against a wall and sucks his breath in tightly as they go past, creating an enormous heat inside his gut. Perspiration breaks out all over his body. He follows them, shivering when the night air touches his skin.

A saxophone wails and cries out as he leaves the bar.

His car sputters and dies twice, but he manages to catch up to them at the light at the intersection right past the bar. He smiles with relief. If she doesn't know he knows what she is, she does know that he's been following her for the last couple of weeks. It's become a game of sorts.

Just now she's looking over her shoulder at him, her face an oval of obscurity. He imagines her red lips smiling. The light changes. The two cars charge into what remains of the night.

David turns the radio up for the drive out to her secluded house half-embedded in the earth, a trendy house with the focus on saving energy and blending into the environment without disturbing it. A rich house for a rich woman. David starts singing and their cars pass and repass each other. He almost drives too fast, singing too loudly about being tied to a mast and of rocks and of home, singing much too loudly. He lapses into silence as they arrive. The stranger can go into the house but he cannot. He parks the Volkswagen out of sight and waits.

He stirs sleepily in the early sun. Birds scream out overhead, pin wheeling and diving. David snatches at the fading dream of blood in a chalice spilled over a soft, naked torso. Willo / Lara / Christine. He staggers out of the car and views the house mournfully. The Mercedes sits in the circular driveway, shining red and knowing. He's made a ritual of going to the door each morning after one of her feedings. He likes to touch the stained glass circle and brush the pewter handle with a kiss. It's always locked.

But not today.

David gapes at the slender opening. The stranger must have forgotten to close it when he left her side, if he left her side. She may have drunk too much. She may have killed him.

He enters the house, passes through the rooms in a daze, following what he imagines to be her scent. It will lead him to the bedroom. He descends deeper and deeper into the heart of her house. He passes many pictures and book-lined walls. He feels the darkness of the colors she has chosen to live among, deep browns, blues, and other dusky, nameless colors. Finally, he comes to what must be her room. A door made of walnut is open an inch. He goes through the doorway and closes the door quietly behind him. He turns to regard the blackness.

Blood drips from the air, cloying and sweet.

Suddenly, light enflames a lamp in a corner and he can see the room dimly, the bed enclosed by a black canopy and drapes, the naked man on the floor and the naked woman sitting in a blue velvet chair, the ice princess, the beloved, her.

"I did not know if you would come. I didn't know if I wanted you to. But since you have, please do me a favor and take away this bastard. I cannot stand it. It's made me sick. I am so"—she hunched over her stomach—"sick."

David starts to speak and she shakes her head, begging for silence. "Please, just get him out of my house and lock the doors behind you, especially the front door."

"Is he dead?"

She shakes her head again. David's stomach rises to his throat. The thought of that stranger making her ill was overwhelming.

"Can I do anything for you?"

Her form hurts his eyes. He cannot have her yet; they cannot share. He has to look away.

He hears her move toward the bed. When he looks again, the curtains of the bed have closed around her white body. The smell of blood has also gone. He wonders if he imagined it.

He listens to Boz Scaggs and stretches his lanky frame. He needs to eat something, a steak rare and juicy, oysters on the half shell, caviar, something, but all he has on hand is hamburger. He broils it quickly, heats some leftover squash, and eats alone just as he lives alone, sleeps alone. The stranger had been heavy to unload, an athlete from the looks of the muscles, and a newly turned junkie. He can't imagine why she made such a mistake choosing someone like that, so unclean.

He calls the office. His secretary's frantic. He was supposed to be in court this morning. David had forgotten. He'd never done that before. He tells her it won't happen again if he can help it. It was just that he was sick, still is sick, and hopefully, he'll be in the next day. His secretary oozes sympathy. He hangs up gratefully.

The rent will be due soon. He needs more clients. He wants to do better.

He goes to the bathroom and looks at his unshaven face. He does
not
want to do better. He does
not
need more clients. All that matters is her and the blood in the chalice. His blue eyes are rimmed with red. Sleep surges upward through his body. He sways on his feet. With effort he finds his unmade bed and strips his body of its wrinkled white shirt and jeans.

Night.

He awakens, his body revitalized and ready. He brushes his teeth after a hot shower. He shaves carefully and sings along with a Doobie Brothers album. He belts out, "Do you know that I love you? Do you know that I need you?" and laughs uncontrollably, feverish with anticipation. He has been a thrall to her, a servant; he has indeed served her. He will be rewarded. Then he wonders if she has left her house. It's been an hour since sunset. He has dawdled away precious time.

His heart pushes to get out of his chest. He looks down and imagines the skin bulging outward.

The needle is stuck on "You belong to me," but he hasn't time to fix it. He must run; he must hurry.

He pulls up to her house and parks his car behind hers. The front door is open and a yellow patch of light extends welcome. She expects him.

This may be the night of communion.

His hands clench and unclench as he walks into the house.

"Hello? Anybody home?" he says, hating the quaver in his tone and the inept choice of words.

She sits in a high-backed chair done in alternating stripes of green and burgundy. Her hair is done in two long, silky braids. She wears a simple violet shift with a boatneck and wide, loose sleeves. She gazes at him with an expectant but severe expression.

Wordlessly, he sits on a stool at her feet and waits raptly.

Her lips part and he sees the teeth he has dreamed about, the two canine points so often misunderstood. She speaks.

"I don't know what you want from me. I do know you've been watching me, have been following me for many nights. I don't even want to know why. Do you understand?" She folds her hands and looks at a nearby sculpture of a woman giving birth to a beast. She sighs. "I don't want to know why." The repetition startles her. She leans forward slightly and whispers, "I don't want to know what you want, understand?"

"I know what you are," he says, almost whining.

She shakes her head and sits back. He reaches forward, one hand wanting to grab the end of a braid. She slaps at him. He withdraws.

"Can I call you Willo or Lara or Christine?"

Her mouth purses.

"Well, can I call you something?"

"No, I have no name," she says sharply.

"But you are a vampire," he says, amazed he's finally done it, that it came out so easily.

"You go too far."

"I want you. I want you to—" He is unable to finish his request. He does not need to.

Her hands search out her ears. Her fingers flash with golden rings. She tucks her head down.

"I want you to go, please." There is a petulance, a childish sulkiness. "You make me mad."

"I won't go."

She sits up and changes her voice into a steel instrument. Her blue-gray eyes watch him closely.

"When you were silent, when you asked nothing, when you were my shadow, then you were love, protection, and fear. I enjoyed you. Now you are a thousand voices, asking, always asking. Beware. You may be answered. Then what will you do?"

He begins unbuttoning his shirt. He takes it off and folds it neatly. Then he makes her touch his chest and her fingers are like frost upon grass. She regards this without emotion. He makes her fingers go to his throat.

"Please?" he says urgently.

She does not answer. Her lips remain fixed and rose-colored. She takes back her hands. He finishes undressing, then sits motionless, waiting.

The hours of the night dissipate around them. He waits and watches. She stares.

Toward dawn, David's heart flutters like a trapped bird's. He can no longer sustain the unknowing. She must free him. He reaches for her, kisses her marble mouth. Her eyes are like opals.

"Blood," he whispers.

She seems to laugh or cry softly, her face toward the open door.

"Morning comes, please hurry . . ."

She unbraids her golden hair and slips off her shift. David springs to his feet in hope. She takes his hand and guides him toward the door, where the dawn rolls in on a wave of pearly light. He pulls back, afraid for her.

"Blood," he says longingly.

She smiles as the sun rises and the pearls take fire. He screams, afraid she will die. The light pours over her smooth body. She glows with health.

David falls to the floor in extreme pain and disbelief. She kneels at his side, bends over him, her breasts brushing his bleeding, cracking chest.

"You are dying," she says.

"Why?" he groans, his mouth a charred pit her tongue enters with a kiss.

"It is what you wanted, isn't it?"

I can remember, when I wasn't so prone to catching colds, thinking how great it was to walk in the rain, or to view a massive storm over the ocean or mountains, or sit with a book in the living room while thunder and lightning play games with the lights. It was great fun, and not at all frightening.

David Morrell, author of
The Totem
and
First Blood,
lives in Iowa City, where he teaches English at the University of Iowa. His latest is the best-selling
Brotherhood of the Rose.
He eats bark and berries.

Gail saw it first. She came from the Howard Johnson's toward the heat haze in the parking lot where our son Jeff and I were hefting luggage into our station wagon. Actually, Jeff supervised. He gave me his excited ten-year-old advice about the best place for this suitcase and that knapsack. Grinning at his sun-bleached hair and nut-brown freckled face, I told him I could never have done the job without him.

It was 8 A.M., Tuesday, August 2, but even that early, the thermometer outside our motel unit had risen to eighty-five. The humidity was thick and smothering. Just from my slight exertion with the luggage, I'd sweated through my shirt and jeans, wishing I'd thought to put on shorts. To the east, the sun blazed, white and swollen, the sky an oppressive, chalky blue. This'd be one day when the station wagon's costly air conditioning wouldn't be a luxury but a necessity.

My hands were sweat-slick as I shut the hatch. Jeff nodded, satisfied with my work, then grinned beyond me. Turning, I saw Gail coming toward us. When she left the brown parched grass, her brow creased as her sandals touched the heat-softened asphalt parking lot.

"All set?" she asked.

Her smooth white shorts and cool blue top emphasized her tan. She looked trim and lithe and wonderful. I'm not sure how she did it, but she seemed completely unaffected by the heat. Her hair was soft and golden. Her subtle trace of makeup made the day seem somehow cooler.

"Ready. Thanks to Jeff," I answered.

He grinned up proudly.

"Well, I paid the bill. I gave them back the key," Gail said. "Let's go." She paused. "Except—"

"What's wrong?"

"Those clouds." She pointed past my shoulder.

I turned—and frowned. In contrast with the blinding, chalky, eastern sky, I stared at numbing, pitch-black western clouds. They seethed on the far horizon, roiling, churning. Lightning flickered like a string of flashbulbs in the distance, the thunder so muted it rumbled hollowly.

"Now where the hell did
that
come from?" I said. "It wasn't there before I packed the car."

Gail squinted toward the thunderheads. "You think we should wait till it passes?"

"It isn't close." I shrugged.

"But it's coming fast." She bit her lip. "And it looks bad."

Jeff grabbed my hand. I glanced at his worried face.

"It's just a storm, son."

He surprised me, though. I'd misjudged what worried him.

"I want to go back home," he said. "I don't want to wait. I miss my friends. Please, can't we leave?"

I nodded. "I'm on your side. Two votes out of three, Gail. If you're really scared, though . . ."

"No. I . . ." Gail drew a breath and shook her head. "I'm being silly. It's just the thunder. You know how storms bother me." She ruffled Jeff's hair. "But I won't make us wait. I'm homesick, too."

We'd spent the past two weeks in Colorado, fishing, camping, touring ghost towns. The vacation had been perfect. But as eagerly as we'd gone, we were just as eager to be heading back. Last night, we'd stopped here in North Platte, a small, quiet town off Interstate 80, halfway through Nebraska. Now, today, we hoped we could reach home in Iowa by nightfall.

"Let's get moving then," I said. "It's probably a local storm. We'll drive ahead of it. We'll never see a drop of rain."

Gail tried to smile. "I hope."

Jeff hummed as we got in the station wagon. I steered toward the interstate, went up the eastbound ramp, and set the cruise control at fifty-five. Ahead, the morning sun glared through the windshield. After I tugged down the visors, I turned on the air conditioner, then the radio. The local weatherman said hot and hazy.

"Hear that?" I said. "He didn't mention a storm. No need to worry. Those are only heat clouds."

I was wrong. From time to time, I checked the rearview mirror, and the clouds loomed thicker, blacker, closer, seething toward us down the interstate. Ahead, the sun kept blazing fiercely though. Jeff wiped his sweaty face. I set the air conditioner for DESERT, but it didn't seem to help.

"Jeff, reach in the ice chest. Grab us each a Coke."