Lost Souls

by Poppy Z. Brite

  Zillah glanced right and left at his cohorts. They were poised like springs, like big cats on the prowl. “Molochai—Twig—take him down,” he said. “Save the boy if you can.”

  Steve knew his shaky bargaining chip was gone. He thrust Nothing as far away from him as he could and started swinging the bat as Molochai and Twig closed in.

  One came at him high, one low. He brought the bat down on a shaggy head and felt it thunk against a cushion of hair. The owner of the hair staggered but recovered fast. Then one long pair of arms was wrapped around his legs and one slobbering feral face was pushed up close to his, and he lost his balance and went back onto the bed with both of them crushing him.

  Sharp nails raked across his chest, drawing beads of blood. Sharper teeth sank deep into the meat of his hand, and he screamed and lost his grip on the bat. It clattered to the floor and rolled under the bed. In an instant Zillah had darted across the room and retrieved it.

  A snorting, snuffling head burrowed in between Steve’s neck and shoulder. The filthy dishevelled hair tickled horribly. Steve whipped his head around, tried to bring his chin down tight against his chest. He felt hot drool on his neck. Teeth found his skin and nipped.

  “Don’t do him just yet,” said Zillah mildly, and the teeth went away. One creep had Steve pinned on the bed, sitting on his chest and trapping his arms. Molochai and Twig were heavy and bulky and amazingly strong, and Steve couldn’t catch his breath with the full weight of whichever one it was on top of him. Ghost hadn’t even had time to struggle before the other creep had pinned him. Steve aimed a useless kick at Zillah, who stepped gracefully away.

  Nothing pushed himself away from the wall, flung his arms out in a pleading gesture. “Don’t hurt them.”

  Zillah snorted and hawked a bright pink gob of blood to the floor. “Why not?” he said, dangerously quiet.

  “Because they know me. Ghost knows who I am. He said so.”

  “Yesss?” Zillah’s smashed face convulsed in what might have been a smile. “I know who you are too. You’re a pretty little boy who hasn’t learned his place yet. You’re a pest who is going to have his throat ripped out in about two minutes if he doesn’t SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Zillah rounded on Nothing, jabbed him hard in the stomach with the baseball bat. The boy staggered backward, the wind knocked out of him.

  “I want him to watch,” Zillah continued. He held the bat up, waved its broad end in front of Steve’s face. “I don’t need this, you know. I could kill both of you with one hand while I jerked off with the other. But since you used it on me …”

  Zillah moved to the head of the bed, stood over Ghost’s prone form. By craning his head back, Steve could just see him. Zillah shoved the bat into Ghost’s face, and Steve’s mouth went dry. “Such a fine, straight, hard piece of wood. But so plain. It needs brightening up, don’t you think? … with some pretty red GORE? … and some silky blond HAIR? … and some MAGIC BRAAAINS?”

  Zillah’s voice rose to a shriek on the last word, and he raised the bat high above his head. Steve brought his knees up hard, bucked and arced and thrashed. But the creep’s grip on him did not slacken and the bat was falling, falling …

  “NOOOOOO!” A black blur was in the air, raincoat billowing like great wings, arrowing straight across the bed and slamming into Zillah. The bat flew out of Zillah’s hands and sailed across the room. It connected with the window and punched through the glass, and then the Slugger was gone, no longer a factor in the equation.

  Nothing’s momentum carried him and Zillah straight into the opposite wall. Zillah took most of the impact. He slid down the wall and lay against it, dazed, his head bracketed by words in pencil and paint and crayon. There was a comma-shaped smear of blood on the wall where Zillah’s head had hit. Minute cracks in the plaster radiated from it.

  Nothing crouched astride Zillah, still gasping for breath. “I’m sorry,” he sobbed. “You made me kill Laine and I did it. But not Ghost. Not Ghost.”

  Molochai and Twig were so surprised by the whole spectacle that they let go of Steve and Ghost. Steve scrambled up, expecting them to go for him at once. Instead they bounded across the room to Zillah.

  Twig grabbed Nothing and pulled him up by the front of his coat. Molochai raised his hand to his face. After a moment Steve saw that he was biting through the skin of his own wrist. When Molochai’s blood began flowing freely, he pressed his wrist to Zillah’s mouth.

  Steve’s hands ached. He supposed it was an aftereffect of the adrenaline rush. Later he would realize he had been gripping the bat so tightly that his fingers were still curled in the shape of its handle.

  Nothing’s teeth clacked together when Twig hauled him up, and he tasted blood again. The taste reminded him of the potion in the wine bottle, the feast of Laine’s blood they had shared. More than anything he wanted to be back in the van, singing, drinking, on his way to New Orleans. Going away from here. Something had gone terribly wrong.

  At least Zillah wasn’t dead, though he looked as if he ought to be. He had taken a baseball bat in the face without going down, and Nothing thought he could have taken the blow against the wall too, though it had been hard enough to break someone’s neck. But the two blows so close upon each other had stunned him. Maybe Molochai’s blood would bring him around. If it did, Nothing didn’t know what Zillah would do to him, or to Steve and Ghost. He had to get them out of here before Zillah came all the way back.

  He reached up; grasped Twig’s hands, and removed them from the lapels of his coat. “You want to waste time fucking with me?” he asked. “Zillah didn’t tell you to fuck with me. And he’s hurt bad.”

  “Because of you,” Twig growled.

  Nothing could feel Twig’s hands trembling in his grasp, aching to go for his throat. He knew Twig could kill him in a heartbeat. “Then save me for him. Let him punish me for getting him hurt. He’ll be pissed if he comes round and you’ve already sucked me dry, won’t he?”

  Now Nothing was sure Twig wanted to rip his throat open. Molochai would do it if Twig did. They would kill him and then tear into Steve and Ghost. Nothing met Twig’s eyes and held them. Twig was wilder and meaner, oh yes; Twig was the badass here.

  But Nothing was smarter.

  “Zillah’s lying there bleeding,” he said. “If you won’t help me, I’ll carry him out myself. But he’ll know what happened.”

  He jerked away from Twig and tensed, ready to fight if Twig lunged at him.

  Twig’s eyes blazed feral light.

  Nothing blazed right back at him.

  And Twig’s eyes dropped.

  Later, Steve would be unable to find the right words to tell Ghost how he had felt in the next few moments. Ghost got it anyway, of course, but not because of Steve’s attempt to describe it.

  The atmosphere in the room changed subtly. It had been electric, dangerous, full of blood and the possibility of murder. But then something happened.

  Steve considered himself much less perceptive than he really was. What he would say to Ghost later was “If even I could feel it, it must have been there.” It was as if the kid were putting out pheromones or something. Something that felt (he would shake his head and laugh a little, saying these words) like the essence of childhood lost. This was baby powder and cigarette smoke, forgotten toys and eyeliner and torn black lace, nursery rhymes and dank nightclub restrooms haunted by a breath of vomit. This was the distilled essence of all that was lost forever and all that came to replace it.

  I’m twenty-three years old, thought Steve, though he didn’t know why. I’m supposed to be a grown-up. This game is for keeps. No one is ever going to come along and make everything all right for me again, because no one can.

  Then all at once the strangeness was gone from the room, and there was only the electric tension again. But it did not feel quite so murderous now.

  “You help me carry him,” Nothing told Molochai. Then he glanced back at Twig. “You go on out and start the van.”

  Twig’s eyes flare
d again, and for a moment Steve thought the kid had pushed it too far. But Twig just exhaled noisily—Steve smelled rotten blood—and left the room.

  Nothing and Molochai got Zillah’s arms around their necks and helped him up. Nothing looked at Steve with wide brimming eyes, trying to smile. Sadness and pride warred in his face. “I didn’t let them hurt you,” he said. “Now maybe you’ll believe me. I never meant for any of this to happen.”

  Now that the fight was ebbing out of him, Steve felt weaker by the minute. “I just want you out of here,” he said. “All of you.”

  “We’re going. Don’t worry.” Nothing glanced at Ghost, and his carefully composed expression seemed to crumble a little, but he caught it quickly.

  Steve’s anger lessened as he looked at the kid. Scruffy and none too clean, in ragged clothes and that damn phony-looking black dye job, looking as if he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep or a decent meal in weeks, there was nonetheless a strange, innocent dignity to him. His features were clear and heartbreakingly young, and when he’d stood up with Zillah leaning against him, a kind of holiness had broken over his face. A sense of rightness, of arriving at a place he had been seeking for a long time.

  Next to him, the creeps looked worse than ever.

  Ghost stared at Nothing. As he had come awake, he had known something about Nothing, about his past. A baby—a jumble of bright festive streets—a spreading pool of blood on a hardwood floor. He had known that somehow Nothing was connected to the bad times that were coming, maybe already here. Most of it was gone now, though he knew he could get it back if he tried.

  Instead Ghost did something he could not remember doing before, not ever. He tried to block Nothing out. He tried to keep his mind from touching Nothing’s, from sharing Nothing’s secrets. He did not want to know who Nothing really was, or where he had come from, or where he was going. He did not want to feel this boy’s pain because he could not lessen it. Nothing was lost. He might not know it yet—but, what frightened Ghost still more, he might know it. He might know it very well. He might have chosen it.

  Zillah swayed against his two supporters, nearly unconscious. Beneath the blood and the swelling his face was androgynous and achingly beautiful in the way that a statue or a mask might be beautiful—smooth and symmetrical, but cold. Bloomless. His lips, purple with lipstick and gore, stretched tight across his broken teeth. His slitted eyes burned bitter, the color of poison.

  “Is he okay?” asked Ghost. “Is he—” He stopped, his eyes widening. A low sexless voice had begun to speak within his head.

  No, I’m not okay, it said. I am in terrible pain because your idiot friend surprised me with his baseball bat and my own lover betrayed me for the sake of your worthless songs. So what? I can take pain. It will pass. And if I choose to return and take my pain out of your hide, I will, my pretty seer. Or, if you like, I’ll shove my tongue down your throat and corrupt you with my spit. Or, if you prefer, I’ll unzip your skin and kiss you with your own heart-blood on my lips. Are you tempted yet?

  “No,” said Ghost. “Get out of my head.” He was not sure if he had spoken aloud; it didn’t matter. He knew Zillah could hear him. The voice crested into laughter, lewd and savage. Ghost thought of a blank soul, a being with no morals and no passions except those that could be gratified at a moment’s notice, a mad child allowed to rage out of control.

  Now Ghost could only see Zillah and the others through a veil of tears. Tears not for the awful feeling of having his thoughts raped by such a being, but for Nothing. For that quiet little boy with the thin haunted face, with the dyed black hair. For that boy who loved Zillah with all his soul.

  “Stop it,” said Nothing. “Please. Everyone just stop it. We’re leaving right now.” He pulled Molochai and Zillah toward the door.

  He hadn’t meant to cause all this pain. How could he have known what would happen? No one had told him much of anything yet. They had taught him how to rip through resisting flesh, how to coax the last drop of blood from a limp cold body that had once been warm and alive. But no one had sat him down and told him how quickly and inexorably the other world—the day world, he supposed—would begin to slip away. Zillah hadn’t said to him, We are your whole world now; we and others of our kind. We are the only friends you can have now. Or as Molochai and Twig might have put it, Everyone else is just cocktails.

  He glanced back at Ghost one last time. He wished he could crawl into bed with Ghost, pull the pile of patchwork quilts and scruffy blankets around him, and sleep in Ghost’s arms. Ghost would be a friend, not a wild and predatory master like Zillah. If Ghost would love him, he might still have some choice as to what his life would be.

  But Ghost did not want him. And why think such thoughts anyway? He had made his choice. Not even a choice, really. He had simply come home.

  Steve got up to make sure the creeps were leaving. The kid’s big dark eyes were smeared with makeup and tears. Steve felt a touch of pity for him. He couldn’t be much older than thirteen; right about now he ought to be cadging his first joint or his first feel, not breaking into people’s houses with assholes like these. But that was the kid’s choice. Pity wouldn’t help him. Steve looked back at Ghost on the bed, but Ghost was facing the window, avoiding everyone’s eyes.

  Steve followed them down the hall into the living room. “Don’t go out the way you came in, huh?” he said. “Use the door this time.”

  The kid—Nothing, what a weird name, what a shitty name when you thought about it—turned as he went through the door and looked at Steve. In those dark eyes Steve saw again the essence of childhood lost. The dark innocence, the doomed sadness. And the shame.

  “I’m sorry,” Nothing said again.

  Inanely, Steve wanted to tell him it was okay. But just then Zillah lifted his head and looked at Steve. His eyes were dull, and the wreckage of his nose and mouth still oozed thick blood. Steve hoped he was fucked up for good. Braindamaged, maybe. But he managed to unglue his swollen lips and shape his mouth around four bitter words. “You’ll pay for this,” he said.

  Steve lunged at him. “GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!” Broken nose and busted lip or not—

  But Molochai and Nothing moved quickly, hauling Zillah out to the porch and down the steps. Steve saw a dingy black van parked at the end of the driveway, its tailpipe already belching exhaust. He thought of trying to get the license number, but knew he wouldn’t call the cops: they were happy to bust you for underage drinking or possession of weed, but not too thrilled when you wanted anything else done.

  Steve slammed the front door. Three shadows—one large and unkempt, two small and slim and bowed—slid across the window. Then they were gone.

  He went back to Ghost’s room. Ghost was lying flat on his back, looking at the stars on the ceiling. His hands lay limp on the blanket. Steve sat on the edge of the bed. “Shit,” he said. “We still have a show to do tonight.”

  “They’ll be there,” Ghost told him with absolute certainty.

  20

  The black van cruised Missing Mile for an hour. The town was so small that they passed the same places four or five times. Nothing sat with his face pressed to the window. Zillah lay on the mattress for a while, still dazed from the blows he had taken.

  Nothing thought guiltily of how he had hurled himself across the room and thrown Zillah against the wall, how it must have hurt. He hadn’t even thought about doing it; he had just seen the bat in Zillah’s hands, about to come down on Ghost’s skull, and he had known that Ghost’s death would be lodged in his heart forever if he didn’t do something fast.

  Now maybe Zillah would abandon him on the highway somewhere, or maybe all three of them would kill him, their teeth and tongues burrowing into the soft parts of his body as he had done to Laine. Nothing found that he didn’t much care. He had fucked up. He had tried to have everything he wanted, all at once, and now it was all swirling down the drain.

  After a while Zillah propped himself up and stared moodily out at the
dusty storefronts, the gas station with its wooden facade and old-fashioned pumps, the psychedelic red-and-blue whirligig in the window of the Whirling Disc record store. Soon Zillah’s head drooped forward onto his knees. When Nothing tried to hug him, Zillah pulled away.

  Nothing had seen his friends back home use such behavior on one another. When one of Julie’s previous boyfriends got her twentieth-row Cure tickets for her birthday instead of the tenth-row ones she had wanted, Julie appeared to undergo a grieving process of major proportions. She sat in her room reading the poetry of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. Six pounds melted from her already skinny frame. When anyone at school tried to talk to her, she would stand dramatically silent for several seconds, then slowly shake her head and walk away. In short, she sulked for a week.

  Now Zillah was doing the same thing. Nothing was only a little angry at being manipulated; he deserved it for getting Zillah hurt. What made him angrier was that it worked. He was responsible for the pall that had been cast over the day. Zillah’s beautiful face was all torn up, and that alone made Nothing feel as if he’d pissed on the Mona Lisa or something. No one was tripping anymore, and no one had started drinking yet. The van’s usual air of carnival was gone, and the mood that replaced it was flat, subdued. Nothing wondered, not for the first time, how old the others were. He had thought them older and more sophisticated than he, but right now they were acting like a bunch of teenagers who are mad at each other but aren’t sure why.

  The third time they drove past the record store, Twig slowed the van and pointed out a sign taped to the window. “Hey kiddo. Look at that.”

  Nothing looked. The sign was a grainy photocopy like the gravestone on the Lost Souls? tape. Only this was a picture of a stone angel, wings spread, hand raised in warning or benediction, idiot gaze downcast. Written across the picture in large curly letters was LOST SOULS? TONIGHT AT SACRED YEW.

  “Where’s the sacred yew?” Molochai wanted to know. “Is it in the graveyard?”