Lost Souls

by Poppy Z. Brite

  Ghost shut his eyes and pressed his face to Steve’s. Steve growled deep in his throat, low and feral, and tried to struggle back up. Ghost held him down. If Steve got loose now, he would kill someone or get killed, and the latter seemed a lot more likely.

  “My apologies,” said Zillah. “That was an unkind word. But you mustn’t love me. I have a lover already, if he has learned his lesson.” He held out his arms to Nothing. After the barest hesitation Nothing went to him, huddled into the curve of Zillah’s arm, laid his head on Zillah’s shoulder.

  “No,” said Ann. There was dull desperation in her voice.

  “No. I’ve never fucked anyone else like that. You can’t leave me.”

  Steve made a low choking sound, twisted his head, buried his face in Ghost’s lap. His raw hands scraped weakly at the sidewalk. Ghost caught them and held them tight.

  Nothing looked at Ann. His expression was pitying, a little disdainful. “Go away,” he told her. “Go find somebody else. I belong here—not you.”

  Ann’s face twisted. She stared around wildly, as if the night and the broken glass and the boarded-up storefronts were suddenly strange to her. Ghost ached to go to her, even after all she had said and done, but he couldn’t let go of Steve. Ann’s mouth opened, and for seconds it seemed as if her scream must split the night wide open.

  But then, from far down the sidewalk, another voice came. A loud voice, full of drunken cheer. “Hey! Zillah! Look who we found—it’s Chrissy!”

  Christian could barely stand up straight. This was what it must be like to be drunk. Of course, Twig’s arm was looped tight around Christian’s neck and Molochai seemed to be leaning his full weight against Christian, but it was not the burden of Molochai and Twig that made him unsteady on his feet. It was a combination of relief and giddiness, their warm coppery smell and the touch of skin that would not soon be dead and cold.

  They had waited for him until his shift at the bar was over, chattering about cities they had seen over the past years, rare new drugs they had taken, impossible scenes of carnage through which they had come unscathed. They assured him that Zillah was with them, still very much alive.

  After the bar closed, they dragged him out of the club before Kinsey could give him his cash pay. Their van was parked a few blocks away. Christian saw an assortment of figures on the sidewalk near it. One of them was Zillah, and something in Christian loosened at the sight of those brilliant green eyes, that face still so insouciant and smooth. For fifteen years he had waited to see that face again. Zillah greeted him with a raised eyebrow and a small evil smile.

  But who were these others? Two of them he had seen before. The girl with the smudged face, she had been at the club tonight. And the fair boy, the one whose pale eyes widened when he saw Christian—well, he was the singer for Lost Souls? But there was something else about him … Seeing him up close, Christian remembered. This was the boy who had come riding his bicycle at twilight, when Christian was about to close up his flower stand and go hunting. He had been so hungry, barely able to wait, but for reasons he could not explain to himself he had not wanted to take that boy.

  Another boy—the guitarist, Christian thought—lay on the sidewalk, his face buried in the fair one’s lap, his long legs sprawled at an uncomfortable angle. Christian smelled his blood, but it was of secondary interest to him. For there was another figure here, an unfamiliar one.

  Huddled beside Zillah, standing in Zillah’s shadow so that Christian had not noticed him at once …

  This must surely be the true child of night, the soul of all the thin children who wore black, who traced their eyes in kohl and stared out their windows waiting for the sun to set. This boy looked as if he had been raised in the back room of some hole-in-the-wall nightclub, fed on bread soaked in milk and whiskey, the bones of his face shaped fine by hunger. That was the word for this child: hungry. For what?—for drunkenness, for salvation or damnation, for the night itself. The shadows beneath his eyes might have been painted in watercolor. The wrists protruding from the cuffs of his raincoat were thin, delicately knobby.

  Christian disengaged himself from Molochai and Twig, took a step closer. He did not know that he licked his lips. “Who are you?” he asked.

  “This is Nothing,” Zillah told him.

  The name took a moment to register. But Christian had never forgotten Jessy or her beautiful sugar-candy baby. All through the years he had wondered whether he might have kept the baby and cared for it himself; time after time he had reminded himself that he had abandoned it to give it a chance at a life untainted by blood. But he had never forgotten. Now he knew that he might as well have kept the baby after all. Blood calls to blood; curses and blessings find the ones they were meant for.

  “Nothing?” he asked, and took another step toward the boy. Shyly, the child nodded.

  Christian closed his eyes, and the words of his note pinned to a blanket on some long-ago cold dawn came back to him. “ ‘His name is Nothing,’ ” he quoted. “ ‘Care for him and he will bring you luck.’ “

  He was not at all prepared for the boy’s reaction. Nothing tore himself away from Zillah and launched himself at Christian, threw his arms around Christian’s waist. Christian felt the boy’s body pressing against him, warm and vital.

  “Yes!” Nothing cried. “Yes! Yes! They changed my name! They called me Jason but I hated them and I’m still Nothing and now I’m home and you know who I am! Tell me! Tell me who I am!”

  “Why, you’re Zillah’s son,” said Christian. He had assumed they knew. But there was silence. Absolute silence. Even Molochai and Twig were quiet.

  Nothing only stared up at Christian. The shadows beneath his eyes were suddenly deeper; his mouth was limp, half-open. He had the look of an ill-used child, a child kept out too late. “Oh,” he said. That seemed to be all he could say. “Ohhh.”

  Zillah gently pried Nothing away from Christian. Nothing shut his eyes tight and curled into Zillah’s arms. His head lay heavily against Zillah’s chest. In an instant he seemed to have fallen into deep shock.

  Zillah caressed him absently. “Mardi Gras?” he asked Christian. “That little girl at your bar?”

  Christian nodded.

  “Well,” said Zillah. He was paler than usual, but he held himself straight, and his eyes were fiercely happy. More than that, Christian realized. Zillah’s eyes were proud. “Well. That changes things, doesn’t it? That makes things even better. Lovely.”

  Molochai and Twig began whispering to each other. Christian heard a smothered giggle. The singer had been listening to the exchange, but he was more concerned with his friend. The girl seemed to be in a world of her own, slumped against the side of the van, her arms wrapped around herself, her chin tucked into her chest. The streetlight was very bright on her hair.

  Christian looked up at the moon. It hung gravid in the sky, nearly full. Its light was strong enough to hurt his eyes, and he closed them, but still the moon shone through. It shone down upon them all there on the sidewalk—Steve, his head in Ghost’s lap, furious, wounded, defeated; Zillah, with his sleeping child in his arms; Molochai and Twig, clutching each other, still whispering.

  And Ann alone. Ann alone under the moon. Some of Zillah’s seed was trickling out of her, seeping slow and creamy down her thighs.

  Some—but not all. Inside Ann, two specks of life had glued themselves together, and deep inside her where all was raw and red and wet, something came alive. A microdot of meat, part human, part strange. Nothing’s half-brother, or his half-sister.

  Steve shuddered and lay still again. Ghost stroked his hair helplessly. Nothing moaned, beginning to surface from his shock, burrowing into his father’s arms. The moon shone down, and Christian stared back at it. And inside Ann, the infinitesimal blob of meat stretched and began to grow.

  PART TWO

  21

  Night.

  Heavy green night, pine branches bending low to sweep the gravel road, the dying grass, the trash in the di
tches. Snaky night, riotous with the last October kudzu. The kudzu would be dead in another month, like a dry brown blanket thrown over the trees and the roadsides. But now it still writhed under the moon, succulent, shifting, green.

  Green night.

  Violin Road.

  A trailer up on cinderblocks, a silver Bel Air and a sagging black van parked in the scrubby dirt yard, behind the trailer a tangled thicket of rosebushes that would bear great lacy blossoms on into November. The roses had gone wild.

  Nothing knew that if he turned his head, he would be able to look through the bedroom window and see the spiny etchwork of the rosebushes against the night sky. But he didn’t really want to turn his head. Instead he lay very still, stretched out flat on his back in Christian’s bed. His hands moved through Christian’s glittering black hair, stroked the long curve of Christian’s back.

  Christian sighed and moved closer, nestling his head under Nothing’s chin, and Nothing felt a tiny sweet flare of pain as Christian’s teeth slid a little deeper beneath the skin of his throat.

  He knew Christian was being careful. He knew Christian wouldn’t hurt him, would take only a taste of his blood. This was not feeding; this was lovemaking. Weren’t Christian’s long fingers moving over him, tracing patterns on his ribs and his thighs, seeming to worship the texture of his skin? Still, Nothing had seen those teeth. They were beautiful; he envied them and wished he might have been born hundreds of years ago, before the adaptations of life among humans caught up with his race—but having to stay sober every night of his life would be too great a price even for fangs that curved down over his lips like hooks of ivory.

  At first the teeth had only pricked Christian’s lower lip. They lengthened imperceptibly. Nothing looked into Christian’s mouth, but he could not see how it happened. They were simply longer all of a sudden, like hooked needles, silver-white and glistening. Nothing felt those teeth hard against his lips when Christian kissed him, and when he drew back he tasted blood.

  Christian bit into Nothing’s throat as gently as a junkie sliding a hypo into a sore vein, but Nothing still caught his breath and shivered at the cold exquisite pain. Then Christian’s tongue was there, licking the blood away. Christian stroked him, a different touch from Zillah’s: slower, gentler, less sure. They strained against each other.

  At last Christian’s mouth unfastened from Nothing’s throat, and blood flowed between them, trickling over Nothing’s chest, staining the sheets a little more. Nothing realized he had been holding his breath. He let it out in a great rush. What had he been afraid of? Christian wouldn’t hurt him. He was of Christian’s kind.

  Still, he hadn’t wanted to turn his head.

  “Nothing,” moaned Christian: a breath of fading ecstasy, borne on the scent of blood. “O Nothing. I would like to rip your throat open.”

  “Thank you,” said Nothing. He knew this was a compliment. Then, after a moment: “Tell me about Jessy again.”

  Christian sighed. “She looked like you. The same great dark eyes. The same pointed chin. The same listening silence.”

  “You, um, you fucked her.”

  A pause, then: “Yes. Many times over a hot New Orleans summer.”

  “She was sixteen,” Nothing said thoughtfully.

  “Something like that.”

  “A year older than me.”

  “Yes.”

  “How old were you?”

  A pause. “Three hundred and sixty-eight.”

  Nothing wanted to laugh, but he could not. The thought of all those years stored up in the being who lay beside him, belly warm with his blood, mouth slick with his spit … no, he could not laugh. The sheer weight of those years overwhelmed him. He wondered how it was for Christian. Surely three hundred and sixty-eight years of feeling could not be borne. Had Christian stopped feeling? Did he simply look upon the world, watchful, shutting out joy to keep back the pain of all the years?

  Nothing pressed his face into the pillow. His eyes had gone hot and wet. He kissed Christian’s throat, his mouth. It was just a mouth again, a rather cold mouth now, with a dark sweet taste on the tongue. Two of the top front teeth were unusually sharp … but Christian didn’t smile much. Probably no one ever noticed those teeth.

  “Will I live that long?” Nothing asked.

  “Perhaps. If you’re smarter than Molochai and Twig, and more cautious than Zillah.” Christian stroked Nothing’s head. “I can see the true color of your hair at the roots. Golden-brown. It was that color when you were a baby.”

  “I need a dye job.” Absently he twirled a piece of his hair, put it in his mouth. Then he took a deep breath and asked, “What’s it like to live such a long time?”

  Christian didn’t reply. He glanced at the window and said, “I have to leave. I’m to be at the club at eleven.”

  Nothing wanted to hold Christian, to take away those years, to do something for him. “I could come with you,” he said.

  “Thank you, but no. I’ll lose my job if I keep slipping you drinks. You stay here with the others. When they wake up they’ll want to go out.” Christian stepped into a pair of impossibly long black trousers, buttoned a black shirt up to his chin. He turned to go. At the bedroom door he paused.

  “Christian?” said Nothing.

  “I would not wish it upon anyone,” Christian told him. He disappeared into the dark recesses of the trailer. A moment later Nothing heard the front door close. Then the Bel Air was grinding out of the driveway, heading down Violin Road toward town.

  Nothing lay among the cool tangled sheets, staring at the rags of mist that drifted past the window and obscured the rosebushes. For a while he played with his damp pubic hair, uncurling strands of it, gently tugging at them, letting them spring back. It wasn’t often he had a bed to himself anymore. Usually he slept in a sweaty knot of blankets, hair, limbs. He would wake to find Molochai’s fingers in his mouth or Twig drooling on his pillow. Often he woke to the perverse, sometimes scatological endearments that Zillah liked to murmur in his ear. So he relished this bit of privacy. He lay and let his mind drift where it would.

  How old was Christian now? He calculated and came up with three hundred and eighty-three years. Nothing’s mind tried to balk at the thought of all those years, but he would not let it. No, he told himself. You might be that old yourself someday, so think about it.

  That was so much time. Unless you found others of your kind, others who lived as long, you were bound to spend a lot of that time alone. Others—he made himself think it: humans—would just die on you. Steve and Ghost would die, and he would still be young and roaring—but he would not think about Steve and Ghost.

  Still, he had Zillah, his father, his lover. And he had Molochai and Twig and Christian. They would be there with him, alive. But there must be others of their race who were alone. Christian had been. Maybe that was why Christian seemed so reserved, yet so hungry for love when someone offered it. Just because you got used to being alone didn’t mean you had to like it.

  Maybe time passed differently in New Orleans. Maybe a sort of dream-time existed there, a time that could stretch a single day or compress three hundred and eighty-three years. In New Orleans he had been conceived by the bright sperm of Zillah. In New Orleans Christian had made love to Jessy. His mother. That thin, dark-haired girl of sixteen. That girl who had died giving bloody birth to him.

  Nothing tried to imagine that summer in the French Quarter. The endless sweltering days above the bar. Christian’s long bony hands moving over Jessy’s slick breasts, her distended belly. Her belly that cradled him, unborn. He wished he could be Christian’s hands. He wished he could feel Jessy’s weight above him, her skin slick as if with oil. He imagined Christian thrusting up into her, parting her womb, nudging up against the fetus there. Me, he thought. In the womb, had he been bathed with Christian’s semen? Had it nourished him along with the blood of Jessy?

  And there in the womb, half-formed, had something in him known even then whose child he was?
Had he longed to be nourished by Zillah’s sperm instead of Christian’s? Had something in him wanted his father? Was that why he had spent the first fifteen years of his life alone, always alone, always searching for a place he might belong—for a perfect love?

  Well, he had it now. Body and soul and all the realm between.

  He remembered the night outside the Sacred Yew, now a month past, and all that had transpired on the cold sidewalk. The night of punishment and revelation. He had awakened sometime past sunset the next evening—even then he was beginning to get used to the hours his new family kept, sleeping most of the day and howling all night. He woke back at the trailer, in Christian’s bed. Zillah lay beside him, his head turned slightly away, his hair making colored stripes on the pillow. In slumber, Zillah’s face was almost innocent. When you could not see those eyes.

  Father, Nothing thought.

  He had slipped quietly out of bed, not wanting to wake Zillah yet. He had looked at himself in the bathroom mirror, still able to meet his own eyes, and he had told himself: For a week now you have been fucking your own father. His tongue has been in your mouth more times than you could count. You’ve sucked him off … you’ve swallowed stuff that could have been your brothers and sisters!

  But he could not disgust himself. He could not make himself ashamed. He knew these were things he was supposed to feel, things the rational daylight world would expect him to feel. But he could not force himself to feel them. In a world of night, in a world of blood, what did such pallid rules matter?

  He wasn’t sure he could ever have felt the things expected of him in the normal world, not even when he had been an unwilling part of it. Its morals had never been his; its baubles of status had never hypnotized him with their false glitter. He tried to imagine his friends back home making love with their fathers: Julie humping her fastidious attorney dad, Laine sucking off his hippie-throwback old man who grew stunted pot plants in his study and was supposed to be a genius at computer language. The idea did not offend him; it was sort of gross, because most of the fathers were not what Nothing would call hot-looking, but he could not label it with words like wrong or bad. He wondered if he had ever known what those words meant. Were members of his race born with some sort of amoral instinct that shielded them from the guilt of killing to stay alive? If he had not been born with such an instinct, could he have taken that first bite out of Laine’s throat?