The Tale of the Body Thief (58 page)

“Body and soul,” said the smooth-skinned, poised young man opposite. He removed the seersucker jacket, tossing it on the nearby chair, and sat back again, folding his arms across his chest. The fabric of the turtleneck shirt showed his muscles to great advantage, and the clean white cotton made his skin seem all the more richly colored, almost a dark golden brown.

“Yes, I know,” he said, the lovely British voice flowing naturally. “It’s quite shocking. I had the very same experience, only a few days ago in New Orleans, when the only friend I have in the world appeared before me in this body! I sympathize completely. And I do understand—you needn’t ask me again—that my old body is probably dying. It’s just I don’t know what either of us can do.”

“Well, we can’t go near it, that’s certain! If you were to come within a few feet of it, James might sense your presence and focus sufficiently to get out.”

“You think James is still in the body?” he asked, the eyebrows lifting again, precisely as David always lifted them when he spoke, the
head tipping forward ever so slightly, and the mouth on the edge of a smile.

David in that face! The timbre of the voice was almost exactly the same.

“Ah … what … oh, yes, James. Yes, James is in the body! David, it was a blow to the head! You remember our discussion. If I was to kill him, it ought to be a swift blow to the head. He was stammering something about his mother. He wanted her. He kept saying to tell her that Raglan needed her. He was in that body when I left the room.”

“I see. This means the brain is functioning but the brain is severely impaired.”

“Exactly! Don’t you see? He thought he would stop me from hurting him because it was your body. He had taken refuge in your body! Oh, he figured wrong! Wrong! And to try to lure me into the Dark Trick! What vanity! He should have known better. He should have confessed his little scheme the moment he saw me. Damn him. David, if I haven’t killed your body, I’ve wounded it beyond repair.”

He had drifted into his thoughts precisely the way he always did in the midst of conversation, the eyes soft and wide and looking off into the distance through the floor-length windows, and over the dark bay.

“I must go to the hospital, mustn’t I?” he whispered.

“For God’s sakes, no. Do you want to be plunged into that body as it dies! You can’t be serious.”

He climbed to his feet with an easy grace, and moved to the windows. He stood there staring out into the night, and I saw the characteristic posture in him, I saw the unmistakable expression of David in troubled reflection in the new face.

What absolute magic it was to see this being with all his poise and wisdom shining from within this young form. To see the soft intelligence behind the clear young eyes as he looked down at me again.

“My death’s waiting for me, isn’t it?” he whispered.

“Let it wait. It was an accident, David. It’s not an inevitable death. Of course there is one alternative. We both know what it is.”

“What?” he asked.

“We go there together. We get into the room somehow by bewitching a few medical persons of various rank. You push him out of the body, and you go into it, and then I give you the blood. I bring
you to me. There is no conceivable injury that the full infusion of blood won’t heal.”

“No, my friend. You should know better by now than to suggest it. That I cannot do.”

“I knew you’d say it,” I said. “Then don’t go near the hospital. Don’t do anything to rouse him from his stupor!”

And then we both fell silent, looking at one another. The alarm was fast draining out of me. I was no longer trembling. And I realized quite suddenly that he had never been alarmed.

He wasn’t alarmed now. He did not even look sad. He was looking at me, as if asking me silently to understand. Or perhaps he wasn’t thinking of me at all.

Seventy-four years old he was! And he had gone out of a body full of predictable aches and pains and dulling vision and into this hardy and beautiful form.

Why, I could have no idea at all of what he was really feeling! I’d swapped a god’s body for those limbs! He had swapped the body of an aged being, with death ever present at his shoulder, a man for whom youth was a collection of painful and tormenting memories, a man so shaken by those memories that his peace of mind was fast crumbling away entirely, threatening to leave him bitter and discouraged in the few years he had left.

Now he had been given back his youth! He might live another whole lifetime! And it was a body that he himself had found enticing, beautiful, even magnificent—a body for which he himself had felt carnal desire.

And here I’d been crying anxiously about the aged body, battered and losing its life drop by drop, in a hospital bed.

“Yes,” he said, “I’d say that is the situation, exactly. And yet I know that I should go to that body! I know that it is the proper home of this soul. I know that every moment I wait, I risk the unimaginable—that it will expire, and I will have to remain in this body. Yet I brought you here. And here is exactly where I intend to remain.”

I shuddered all over, staring at him, blinking as if to wake myself from a dream, and then shuddering again. Finally I laughed, a crazed ironic laugh. And then I said:

“Sit down, pour yourself some of your bloody miserable Scotch and tell me how this came about.”

He wasn’t ready to laugh. He appeared mystified, or merely in a
great state of passivity, peering at me and at the problem and at the whole world from within that marvelous frame.

He stood a moment longer at the windows, eyes moving over the distant high-rises, so very white and clean looking with their hundreds of little balconies, and then at the water stretching on to the bright sky.

Then he went to the small bar in the corner, without the slightest awkwardness, and picked up the bottle of Scotch, along with a glass, and brought these back to the table. He poured himself a good thick swallow of the stinking stuff, and drank half of it, making that lovely little grimace with his tight new facial skin, exactly the way he had with the older, softer face, and then he flashed his irresistible eyes on me again.

“Well, he was taking refuge,” he said. “It was exactly what you said. I should have known he would do it! But damn, it never occurred to me. We had our hands full, so to speak, dealing with the switch. And God knows, I never thought he’d try to seduce you into the Dark Trick. What made him think he could fool you when the blood started to flow?”

I made a little desperate gesture.

“Tell me what happened,” I said. “He knocked you out of your body!”

“Completely. And for a moment I couldn’t imagine what had happened! You can’t conceive of his power! Of course he was desperate, as were we all! Of course I tried to reclaim myself at once, but he repelled me and then he started firing that gun at you!”

“At me? He couldn’t have hurt me with it, David!”

“But I didn’t know that for certain, Lestat. Suppose one of those bullets had struck you in the eye! I didn’t know but that he might shock your body with one good shot and somehow manage to get back into it himself! And I can’t claim to be an experienced spirit traveler. Certainly not on a level with him. I was in a state of plain fear. Then you were gone, and I still couldn’t recapture my own body, and he turned that gun on the other, lying on the floor.

“I didn’t even know if I could take possession of it. I’ve never done this. I wouldn’t even attempt it when you invited me to do so. Possession of another body. It’s as morally loathsome to me as deliberately taking human life. But he was about to blow the head off that body—that is, if he could get proper control of the gun. And where was I? And what was to happen to me? That body was my only chance of reentrance into the physical world.

“I went into it exactly the way I’d instructed you to enter your own. And I had it up and on its feet instantly, knocking him backwards, and almost dislodging the gun from his hand. By that time the passage outside was full of panic-stricken passengers and stewards! He fired another bullet as I fled over the veranda and dropped down to the lower deck.

“I don’t think I realized what had happened until I hit those boards. The fall would have broken my ankle in my old body! Probably even my leg. I was prepared for that inevitable splitting pain, and suddenly I realized I wasn’t hurt at all, that I’d climbed to my feet almost effortlessly, and I ran down the length of the deck and into the door to the Queens Grill Lounge.

“And of course that was the very wrong way to go. The security officers were on their way through that room to the Signal Deck stairs. I had no doubt they would apprehend him. They had to. And he’d been so awkward with that gun, Lestat. It was the way you described him before. He really doesn’t know how to move in these bodies he steals. He remains too much himself!”

He stopped, took another drink of the Scotch, and then filled the glass again. I was mesmerized watching him, and listening to him—to the authoritative voice and manner combined with the glistening and innocent face. Indeed, late adolescence had only just completed itself in this young male form, though I hadn’t thought about it before. It was in every sense only just finished, like a coin with the first clear impression stamped upon it and not a single tiny scratch of true wear.

“You don’t get as drunk in this body, do you?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I don’t. Nothing is the same, actually. Nothing. But let me go on. I didn’t mean to leave you on the ship. I was frantic for your safety. But I had to.”

“I told you not to worry on my account,” I said. “Oh, Lord God, those are almost the same words I used to him … when I thought he was you. But go on. What happened then?”

“Well, I stepped back out into the hallway behind the Queens Grill Lounge, where I could still see inside through the little glass window in the door. I figured they had to bring him down that way. I didn’t know of any other way. And I had to know if he had been caught. Understand, I’d made no decision as to what to do. Within seconds, a whole contingent of officers appeared, with me—David Talbot—in the very midst of them, and they ushered him—the old
me—hastily and grimly through the Queens Grill itself and towards the front of the ship. And oh, to see him struggling to preserve his dignity, talking at them rapidly and almost cheerfully, as if he were a gentleman of great wealth and influence, caught up in some sordid annoying little affair.”

“I can imagine it.”

“But what is his game, I thought. I didn’t realize of course that he was thinking of the future, how to take refuge from you. All I could think was, What is he up to now? Then it occurred to me that he would send them to search for me. He’d blame me for the entire incident, of course.

“At once, I checked my pockets. I had the passport of Sheridan Blackwood, the money you’d left to help him get clear of the boat, and the key to your old cabin upstairs. I was trying to think what I should do. If I went to that cabin they would come to look for me. He didn’t know the name on the passport. But the cabin stewards would put it all together, of course.

“I was still utterly confused when I heard his name coming over the loudspeakers. A quiet voice was asking for Mr. Raglan James to report to any available officer of the ship at once. So he had implicated me, believing me to have that passport which he gave to you. And it would only be a matter of time before the name Sheridan Blackwood was connected to it. He was probably giving them a physical description of me now.

“I didn’t dare go down to Five Deck to try to see if you’d made your hiding place safely. I might be leading them there if I tried. There was only one thing I could do, as I saw it, and that was to hide somewhere until I knew that he was off the ship.

“It seemed entirely logical to me that he’d be taken into custody in Barbados on account of the firearm. And then he probably didn’t know what name was on his passport, and they would have a look at it before he could pull it out.

“I went down to the Lido Deck, where the great majority of the passengers were having breakfast, got myself a cup of coffee, and crept into a corner, but within minutes I knew this wasn’t going to work. Two officers appeared and were obviously looking for someone. I barely escaped notice. I started talking to two kindly women next to me, and more or less slipped into their little group.

“Within seconds after these officers moved on, but another announcement
came over the public address system. This time they had the name right. Would Mr. Sheridan Blackwood report to any officer of the ship at once? And another dreadful possibility occurred to me! I was in the body of this London mechanic who’d murdered his entire family and escaped from a madhouse. The fingerprints of this body were probably on file. James wasn’t past making that known to the authorities. And here we were docking now in British Barbados! Not even the Talamasca could get this body out of custody if I were taken. Much as I feared to leave you, I had to try to get off the ship.”

“You should have known I’d be all right. But why didn’t they stop you at the gangway?”

“Ah, they almost did, but it was sheer confusion. Bridgetown harbour is quite large, and we were properly docked at the pier. No need for the little launch. And it had taken so long for the customs officials to clear the ship for disembarkation that there were hundreds waiting in the aisles of the lower deck to go ashore.

“The officers were checking boarding passes as best they could, but I managed again to slip in with a little group of English ladies, and I began talking quite loudly to them about the sights of Barbados and the lovely weather, and I managed to get through.

“I walked right down and onto the concrete wharf and towards the customs building. My next fear was that they would check my passport in that building before I’d be allowed through.

“And of course you have to remember, I’d been in this body for less than an hour! Every step felt completely strange to me. Over and over I looked down and saw these hands, and there came the shock—Who am I? I would look into people’s faces, as if peering out of two holes in a blank wall. I couldn’t imagine what they saw!”