While he was in those corsets, and alternately braces, Doris sometimes thought she should hug him and tell him that there really had been nothing wrong with him, just like there was nothing at all inferior about Negroes. But she was not overly fond of herself. When he awoke from death, she could have guided him away from the Haversmiths. And she did not.
As time marched on, Mab and Argall got chummier. In between the pages filled with lore and legends, she would let the world that spun beneath sunlight slip in: like the “Indian Wars” waged by a handful of tribes, presently fighting in the north. After hearing about a red man who had taken to slavery in the south in the manner of the region’s white compatriots, it was heartening to know everything was not being infected by the notion of Manifest Destiny.
Doris left Argall and Mab with assurances that she would be back to dwell in the corners of the residences they took over, not knowing if she actually would. But as long as she wasn’t going southward again, she thought she could be quite the intrepid explorer.
Doris hated burying herself in the earth at dawn, but that was the only way to make her way through the country at night. She had a backpack with numerous boots inside, along with several books, an animal skin pouch full of blood, which, she soon noticed, went bad rather quickly. She took to the blood of animals sooner than she thought she’d have to. When no one else was around, she could run for several miles before she fell to her knees with hunger pains.
She would sometimes go to sleep hungry, which for her was accompanied by mild shaking, and it was in these times, that Doris imagined meeting Tecumseh. He would not see her as a threat. And he would want to talk late into the night of philosophy and how to prevent more pain and bloodshed for those beneath the feet of some giant.
After a few weeks of traveling in this manner, Doris woke up one evening to find that her eyes were already crimson red. Her fangs had protruded. She pushed away the branches that hid her borrow, and found herself in the aftermath of a slaughter. The dead were all around her, red men and, less in number, pale ones.
She heard a high-pitched scream and followed it until she found a woman in trousers and warpaint up a hill, kicking at an odorous group of men and women, black, red, and white, all clawing at her heels.
Ghouls. Doris heard about them from Mab, and she’d read more in the books she’d taken from the Haversmiths’ place. Mab had demonized them far less than those tomes.
“Come down,” someone said.
The words sounded like they were spoken in the voice of one of the men. It was a mere whisper of sound. The poor Native woman probably could not understand a word of it.
“We do not want your flesh,” said a woman who stood further apart from the group, at its rear. “There is enough for all of us tonight. You were already at death’s door. We would like you to join...”
The woman turned around as Doris approached. Her eyes were pale, and her mouth was hidden beneath a smear of dried blood.
“We have no quarrel with you,” the woman said. The rest of her group had turned around now and were eerily quiet. “If you want blood, go elsewhere.”
“I do not want her blood,” Doris said, with the hiss that accompanied her voice when she was more vampire than human. “I want her to be okay, unlike either of us.”
“We clean up their messes,” the woman said. “And in that, our kind are equals. All your kind wants to do is rule the world. Only the sun prevents you from doing so.”
“It does not prevent me from this,” Doris said, extending her finger nails. She threw herself into the center of them. She had the woman on her back, and rolling over to her side, kicked the woman into one of the other ghouls. Three of them had jumped on her, with their jaws snapping at her arms. She elbowed the pale man, and in doing so, saw that he had a leper’s face. She closed her eyes, then stuck her clawed hand into the chest of the one trying to bite at her face.
Doris rolled over again, then pulled her hand out and pushed the ghoul – it was a man – into a pair, a red woman and a black man who’d both been approaching her. Then a hand grabbed her hair from behind and pushed her head into the ground.
She felt the blood trickle down from her nose. They were strong, or at least they could be if they were well-fed enough.
“Let go,” Doris hissed.
“No,” the woman said. “We are lonely, and she will be a strong new member among us.”
The lore was as follows: More than any other hybrid creature of the night, ghouls lost touch with their souls and yet they retained the capability of sensing the difference between soulful and a lack thereof. They were often incapable, however, of understanding that turning somebody else into a ghoul would result in that person’s disconnect from his or her soul as well – and that they would then find themselves among another being divorced from human notions of warmth.
Doris looked around her. The other ghouls had scattered. She could hear their teeth chattering, replenishing themselves. She had no such option.
“Let go,” Doris hissed again.
When the woman did not, Doris screamed as she pulled and tore the woman’s arm off. Then she leaped for the higher ground where the Native woman was.
The Native woman’s chest was heaving in and out. Breathing had been her main focus, until she realized Doris was there beside her. Then she screamed and clawed at Doris’ face.
Doris didn’t fight back. She let her eyes return to normal, and said, “I’m here to help you.”
The Native woman looked down at the rocky slope beneath her. The ghouls were approaching again, one armless, another with a hole through its chest. The Native woman looked into Doris’ eyes and nodded.
Doris picked her up in her arms and jumped away from them, then for what felt like the span of half a state, she ran. It was only when Doris could no longer hear the Native woman’s heartbeat that she stopped. Technically, she had died in Doris’ arms.
After Doris laid her down, she spent the rest of the night crying – until the sky began to lose its murk to lighter blues. She grimaced at the horizon. As Doris began digging into ground to make a burrow, the woman swiftly and quietly awoke.
Doris nearly lept out of her skin. “You’re okay,” she said, hugging the woman with her muddy arms. “Ugh, there’s no time. I cannot bear the sun, and … your heart, it’s still not beating.” Doris’ shoulders slumped. “What’s your name?”
“Gesine,” said the woman.
“Well, Gesine,” Doris said, looking over her shoulder at the orange tint in the sky’s corners, “you can hide somewhere during the day. I will be here when the sun goes down.”
She began digging again, and the woman, Gesine, joined her.
“I would like to stay with you,” she said. “When the sun comes up, the other ones might come, and I do not want to see a pale face ever again.”
“Okay,” Doris said.
Gesine spent that day in a burrow clinging to Doris.
When night came and Doris began her return trip to the city and her supposed compatriots, Gesine came with her. In a room that Mab had decorated in the manner of an English country-style home, complete with a hearth and a large landscape painting, Doris relayed the tale of the battlefield after a loss gargantuan in its sadness – and the lost ghouls feeding on the carcasses.
Argall was most fascinated by the notion that a simple bite could turn someone into a ghoul.
“My experience was much more traumatic,” he said.
“I’m not so sure,” Mab said.
Doris noticed Mab’s accent was beginning to sound more like Argall’s, which itself had changed considerably.
10
Finale
Present^
Doris walked just behind Gesine and Roger, hoping the two of them might continue such walks together without her. Along with a sparse group of men and women in suits or vintage dresses, they headed toward five interconnected buildings on a street in which most of the buildings had been gutted. Only the five remained stand
ing in a condition that most realtors would find desirable, and together they made for the shape of something not unlike a castle. The street itself was a divided heart: a crevice between blocks of brownstones and condos, separate from other blocks in which most of the old buildings seemed to have people clinging to the outside – with some of those buildings now sunken after the earthquakes.
Instead of heading toward the main entrance and the hulking ghoul beside it, Doris and her companions walked around the back. In the corner of her eye, Doris spotted the car that ferried Argall around. Or, rather, it was the same model. He’d gotten another that didn’t have the roof dented in. As they moved ahead, Doris could feel the big ghoul’s aura retreating into the castle-like structure.
Gesine scanned the side of a building for the cellar door. When she spotted it, she quietly yanked it open.
Roger made a face.
Gesine motioned to Doris with a single finger: “Give me a second.”
Then she disappeared down into darkness.
Doris took a look up at the sky. Why couldn’t some piece of moon be up there tonight? She would have been happy with just a sliver. Doris did not intend to have the chance to see it again, not for a long time. She looked over at Roger as he took a container of garlic powder from his pocket. Twenty-six. A few years past a human being’s physical prime.
Argall’s considerable part of their company had that whole department dedicated to their species’ attributes. She’d discovered that even her brain was regenerative, but it merely seemed to maintain a heart fit enough to be majorly crestfallen. She was sure that Argall did not consider those other hearts of theirs, as he now reduced the attributes of others.
“So,” she said, “you smell only faintly of garlic, and for that, we might both do well with a kiss.”
Roger looked at her through one eye, then glanced down and, drawing a long breath, nodded to himself a few times. They were about the same height, and with his eyes closed, he drew his head closer to hers. She did the same, squeezing his top lip, which was warm, with both of her colder lips.
Doris felt a little warmer when he let go, which seemed to be because he needed more air than she did.
“I’ve heard a lot of pop music,” she said. “And I’ve heeded their most important lesson. All of our problems have been solved. Forever and forever.”
Roger smiled somewhat halfheartedly. “Life really is hard, isn’t it?”
“Out there and in here,” Doris said, tapping her head. “If you don’t have the right company...”
“Yeah?” Roger said. “And here I was, thinking it was all dumb luck.” He began to twist the cap off the garlic powder the tiniest bit. “Don’t take that ‘dumb’ bit the wrong way, Doris. I’m glad I met you.”
The faint smell of garlic had her eyes turning blood red and her fangs showing, but Doris smiled.
Soon, in the path down to the cellar, Gesine’s ashen brown hand beckoned them forward.
Doris took a few steps down, then suddenly stopped.
Roger couldn’t see in pitch-black darkness. Take away the ability to be in the sun or bear garlic, and there wasn’t a lot about being human, in and of itself, that was very useful, thought Doris.
“Hold my shoulder,” she said.
As they went down the stairs, Doris whispered to Roger how many steps were left to get to the cellar floor. They then followed Gesine through a stack of barrels.
“Why is it so cold down here?” said Roger through chattering teeth. He waved his other hand around in the dark. “Is this wine?”
“No,” Doris said.
“Oh ...”
The more Doris followed Gesine, the more she could tell that her friend had a faint limp.
When they went down another set of stairs, she put her hand on Gesine’s shoulder.
“There’s blood along the steps,” Gesine said as she came to a stop for a moment. Then shrugging off Doris’ hand, she continued onward.
As they stepped into a cavern lit by torches along the walls, the hole in Gesine’s stomach was quite evident.
“Jeez,” Roger said. “Are you okay?”
The big ghoul from outside – already wounded around its right eye – had been slouched along the wall, from which it pushed off and swiftly tried to kick in Roger’s head. Doris felt the air move around it. She pushed Roger out of the way and took some of the kick as she slashed the creature with extended nails.
With the unwieldy strike, Doris took off a few finger tips. As Gesine jumped on the creature and grabbed its shoulders, it mirrored her and did the same thing. They then threw their knees into each other, at first as fast as lightning and then with a lumbering speed that shown in their drooping eyes.
Doris tried to face the ghoul – to get the thing that was implanted into the back of its head, but he yanked Gesine around to shield himself. She gritted her teeth at the thought of Argall and Mab controlling it somehow.
“Roger!” Doris yelled. “The fire.”
He scrambled to his knees and got up. Roger then jumped to grab onto one of the torches. He had to struggle to pull it from its wedge. While he did that, Doris slid beneath Gesine and then shot up between her and the creature. Feeling the blood rushing to her head, Doris slowly lifted the ghoul’s arms up – more and more, until she pulled them off.
It stood there, armless and expressionless as Gesine dropped to her knees with its hands still on her shoulders. Doris hissed at it and pushed it back as it tried to move forward, flailing its legs.
Behind her, she could feel Roger taking a wide berth around Gesine. He threw the torch to Doris, who caught it and watched as the ghoul’s pale eyes widened and blazed with the reflection of the fire. She poured some of the oil in the base of the torch along the ground and threw it down so that it made a wall of fire. The ghoul stood there several feet behind it. Instead of looking emotionless, the reflection of the fire in its eyes seemed to make them cry.
With her own eyes beginning to do the same thing, Doris wiped them and turned around.
Roger had gone over to Gesine. He was trying without success to pry the hands off her shoulders. Doris went over and fell to her knees beside them. She put her hand on Roger’s shoulder, and he let himself give up. Doris meshed her fingers into the hands’ grips and peeled them off of Gesine. She took one of the other ghoul’s arms and threw it aside.
The other one she gave to Gesine.
Doris then went and slumped against the wall. Roger joined her. He was bleeding from a cut on his face. For some part of her, that cut felt like it was the center of existence itself. Shivering, she pushed that universe aside.
When Gesine was ready, she threw away what was left of the arm. Wiping her mouth, she looked to Doris and then to Roger. They both got up and knelt down next to her again.
“Let’s go,” Gesine said. She grabbed each of their shoulders.
They continued walking, with the cavern’s rocky surroundings subsiding to a hall where a dozen men and women were on each side. Silently facing the walls, they all wore a semblance of a shirt in which most of the back was missing. The resulting skin was framed like a canvas for large tattoos. All of the ink was devoted to the same humanoid figure. It could have been a woman or a man. Parts of him or her were green and grassy. Other parts were all rocks or were covered by litter or something sparkly that Doris figured was broken glass.
From some rooftops, such had a beauty removed from the actuality of it.
“You can all leave,” Doris said. “I won’t let them stop you.”
None of them stirred.
“I’ll be right back,” Roger said.
He left Gesine in Doris’ arms, then walked around to the peoples’ faces.
Doris didn’t really need his help to carry her friend. Even weakened, she could have easily managed all of Gesine’s weight. The cross-section of support, however, was nice.
“Their eyes are covered by masks,” said Roger, “but their ears look fine. Some of their necks, though
...”
The hall began to shake, and little flecks of dust fell down onto the shoulders of the people/paintings. Among them, someone stumbled and fell – a brown-skinned man who was on the stockier side.
One of the other people/paintings gasped.
“You’re human enough to gasp,” Doris said. “You can get him out of here, then.”
Up ahead, Doris could hear a clinking sound that repeated ceaselessly. Roger went and grabbed Gesine’s arm again, and they moved ahead until they went under an archway that led to a huge cavern with an even larger slope that led above ground somewhere. A large cement trunk was parked on it, along with several more further up above it. At the base of that slope, a few dozen people were drinking from wine glasses in front of a collection of stones that looked knitted—strewn together over one another, piece by piece. Obstructing from it, like a sword in a stone, was something that looked like an oil well. Its shifting gears were the source of the clinking sound.
The crowd chatted among themselves with a hushed, pleasant tone.
As Doris and her companions got within shouting distance of them, Mab of the red hair and refined accent turned and took a few steps their way. She’d left Argall standing behind her, facing the well as he talked with a ruddy face in wingtips.
“Hello, Doris,” Mab said with pupils that were blood red. “I’m so glad you could join us. Oh, and look, you brought your new friend. Did you all enjoy the gallery? It’s titled, ‘The Big on Romanticism Series.’ Perhaps the torches were a bit anachronistic.”
Argall excused himself and walked over to Mab’s side.
“Come now,” Argall said, scanning Gesine and Roger. “You were supposed to be the only one who made it through there, Doris – if you insisted on taking another sub-entrance, instead of just the front door. This isn’t the human world.”
Doris felt her eyes turning blood red. “You’re trying to set it in concrete,” she said, “so it can never get up.”
Late Night Partners Page 8
