Lost Souls

by Poppy Z. Brite

  “Indeed, you are too fine. We must band together against the eternal night. The vampires took my brother, and I will not let them take another beautiful young life. I will help you. Lord help me, I will help you.”

  And Arkady Raventon crossed himself twice. First upside down, then right side up.

  “Fern,” said Arkady, holding a packet of dried leaves up to the light.

  They had come downstairs and lit the candles in the shop, calling up the spirits of cinnamon, nutmeg, licorice. Arkady had arranged his materials on the glass countertop: vials and encrusted bottles, a mortar and pestle, a bundle of crumbling envelopes. Now he picked through them, sifting, pinching, sniffing and muttering.

  Steve slouched against the opposite wall, scowling but surreptitiously interested. Ghost watched with his chin propped in his hands, horribly rapt. He did not want to watch the making of the poison that would scour Ann’s womb, but he had to. This was too familiar. This awakened memories of his grandmother and Miz Catlin, or his grandmother alone, hunched over some candlelit table with an assortment of packets and tiny shining bottles close at hand. Ghost would creep out and hide in the shadow of the bookcase or the doorway, and sometimes his grandmother would sense his presence and call him over to watch. Then she would tell him what fragrant oils and leaves she was mixing. This will bring luck to someone’s door, she would explain, or This will ease a woman’s monthly pains. But sometimes the concoctions did not smell sweet at all. Sometimes they smelled brown and fetid, and vapors curled up from her mortar. When his grandmother was mixing that kind of concoction, Ghost always got sent back to bed.

  “Basil,” said Arkady. “Bay leaf.”

  Steve shifted, slumped further. “Shit, we could have gone to the A&P for this.”

  “Pennyroyal,” said Arkady, lowering his eyelids at Steve. “Yarrow, brooklime. And garlic.” A small secret smile crooked his lips. “It won’t like all this garlic.” With a flourish he uncorked a small blue bottle and poured a few drops of cloudy liquid into the mortar. Herbs hissed coldly. A twist of vapor wafted up.

  Steve pushed himself up. “What the fuck was that?”

  Arkady smiled. “The crucial ingredient. Without it, this would be a mere salad.” Steve scowled; Arkady might as well have said Wouldn’t you like to know?

  Ghost watched Arkady scrape the paste from the mortar onto a square of waxed paper. It was a bright organic green, and it seemed to seethe on the paper. Made from a thousand herbs, made from altars, Ghost thought; this stuff would surely burn Ann’s throat when they forced her to swallow it.

  At least, he hoped she only had to swallow it.

  Arkady folded the square of paper in half and twisted the ends. “That,” he said, “is that. Now you must find the girl and bring her to me.”

  Steve and Ghost started speaking at once:

  “How the fuck are we supposed to do that?” said Steve.

  “I can do that,” said Ghost.

  Back upstairs, Ghost looked out the window at the landscape of wedding-cake buildings iced with intricate scrolls of wrought iron. Far to his left, beyond his line of vision, the lights of Bourbon Street glittered; the crowds still staggered; the very stars in the sky swam—bright round stars, great glowing ones, hallucinatory stars.

  At the end of the hall Arkady slipped into bed, and Ghost caught one dry lonely thought: He is too pale, too fragile; my love would surely have shattered him.

  Above it all, above Ghost and Steve and Arkady and the rest of the gaudy town, a small cold moon hung. A moon like a sliver of frosted bone, a moon to bring down winter.

  Ghost turned away from the window.

  Steve was already in bed, his arms wrapped around his pillow. The moonlight smudged crescents of shadow beneath his eyes. With his fingers he had combed most of the tangles out of his hair, and now it lay along his cheeks and forehead, limp with the dirt of the French Quarter, with the sweat of a long road trip. He looked terribly young, younger than the first time Ghost had laid eyes on him, walking through those sun-dappled autumn woods. Back when things were simple.

  “Come on to bed,” Steve said. “It’s almost morning. Tomorrow we’ll figure out how to find Ann and make her swallow that shit. It’ll probably kill her.”

  Ghost sensed unsaid words hanging in the air like river-mist. He slid under the covers, into the comforting pool of Steve’s warmth, and waited.

  At last Steve said, “But I guess that’s better than letting the vampires kill her.”

  “You believe it,” said Ghost, softly enough that Steve could pretend not to have heard.

  But Steve rolled onto his back and answered. “Yeah. I guess I do. I saw Zillah’s face that night, outside the club—I know that now. I saw it, and it was all healed up. I’m sick of lying to myself. You don’t lie to yourself. You’re not scared of what your heart knows.

  “I believe something bad is going to happen to Ann. I believe it because you believe it so much. You think Ann will die if nobody helps her. You believe it so hard that you were ready to sell yourself to Arkady. To save her, if you could. And I guess to save me, too.

  “And anything that you believe in that strongly, Ghost, I’m not gonna argue with. Not in a million years.” Under the covers, Steve’s hand found Ghost’s and gripped it hard, almost painfully. Ghost heard the rest of the thought: Because I trust you, Ghost You and nobody else—and if you believe it, then damn, I guess I believe it too. The Easter Bunny didn’t come through; neither did God or the Haircut Fairy, but you’re still magic.

  “Steve …” Ghost whispered the name. His heart was swelling in his chest, wanting to join somehow with Steve’s heart and become one live pulsing thing. Siamese twins joined at the heart, all the beats of their lives measured out together, their blood running through the same miles of veins.

  Ghost rested his hand on Steve’s chest and found Steve’s heartbeat, even and strong. Under the touch Steve seemed to loosen a little, to uncoil. Did the shadows beneath his eyes grow paler? Ghost put his fingers out to touch those shadows, to try to capture them under his fingernails, maybe put them in his mouth and swallow them. Steve’s eyelashes flickered, but at the last moment his eyes stayed open. He trusted Ghost that much. You are my oldest friend, you are my only brother.…

  Ghost touched the raw-silk skin beneath Steve’s eyes, the roughness of Steve’s cheeks with their four-day stubble, the slowly melting tightness of Steve’s mouth. He laid his head against that steady heartbeat. He felt Steve’s lips shape a word: “Ghost …”

  He managed to make a small sound in his throat.

  “Don’t you ever leave me. Don’t you ever go, man—” Steve stopped, but Ghost heard the sudden hoarseness in his voice.

  “No,” said Ghost. “It won’t be me who goes.” He could say no more. Instead he would swallow those shadows smudging Steve’s eyes; he would lick them away. He bent, and instead of finding Steve’s eyes, his mouth met Steve’s mouth in a clumsy kiss.

  They both grew tense. Ghost thought, No, oh no, that wasn’t what I meant to do, and Steve’s hands came up to push Ghost away.

  But somehow his hands were treacherous; instead of shoving Ghost away they slid over Ghost’s shoulders and locked behind his back. Steve was pulling him closer, Ghost realized. Maybe he could help Steve now, tonight. Maybe he could overcome that terrible loneliness for a while. He nudged Steve’s mouth open just a little at first, then wide, and their tongues met like two beating hearts.

  Molasses, he heard from somewhere. You still taste like molasses.

  “Mmmm?” said Ghost. “What?” Their mouths untangled briefly, then met again.

  Stray thoughts weren’t important. These minutes had to stretch and stretch; this one kiss had to last for a long, long time. In a moment Steve would pull away. That golden flavor on Steve’s tongue, that was not Dixie beer. It was the taste of childhood summers long gone, and laced through it was the dark taste of fear. Already Steve was scared of how much he trusted Ghost; he had said so. This
one kiss would end, and there would not be another, because anything beyond this would be too much for Steve to deal with. It was already freaking him out a little, Ghost could feel that. But he needed it so bad.

  They slept clutching each other as if they might drown in the blankets and pillows. Ghost stayed awake for a long timé. Steve’s head burrowed fiercely into his shoulder; Steve’s breathing stirred the fine hair on his neck; Steve’s long legs entangled with his. Ghost knew full well that in the morning Steve would wake, narrow his eyes against the sunlight, and mutter, “Shit, man, I was so drunk last night, I don’t remember what happened.”

  But tonight Ghost could dream Steve’s nightmares for him. And so he did.

  29

  Ghost walked the streets of old New Orleans looking for Ann.

  When he started out from Arkady’s shop, he thought he would never be able to do it. Better they should have hired a private detective, like the guy in Angel Heart. At least Harry Angel might’ve had a chance of finding Ann by logic and luck. But what chance did Ghost have, who knew these streets not at all, who had only his intuition and blind faith to guide him?

  At first it seemed that there was too much magic here, that it could only cloud intuition and distract faith. On every street corner was another story, in the elegant shade of each courtyard another hovering spirit. Some of them were greedy and reached out to his sensitive mind, whispering come in, come into me, listen to my tale. The buildings and sidewalks themselves seemed to have a susurrant, subliminal voice.

  But soon Ghost realized that he was trying too hard. If he relaxed, he could listen to these sounds with only part of his mind, like a radio playing far away. If he didn’t think about it so hard, his feet would lead him the right way.

  He passed a group of kids wearing black clothes, black lipstick and eyeliner. Silver crosses, daggers, razor blades dangled from their wrists and earlobes. They passed a joint among themselves, from hand to thin hand. Deathers: kids who loved the night, loved the bands whose music spoke of dark beauty and fragile mortality. Vampires were their dream come true, their ideal to aspire to. Bela Lugosi might be dead, but the deathers would keep him alive in their hearts forever. At the Sacred Yew one night, Ghost had seen a boy showing off his new tattoo: two tiny scarlet fang marks on the white flesh of his throat.

  The kids could dream of vampires all they liked, but their faces bore the undeniable stamp of humanity. It was in their imperfections: pimples, scars, the beginnings of laugh-lines. The real vampires had a uniform sort of beauty, ageless and cold. Ghost thought of Zillah’s face, only imperceptibly older than Nothing’s, and then only because of the smirking mouth and the dramatic, wanton eyes.

  Would Nothing catch up with Zillah and the others? Would he reach that same indefinable age and just stop? Ghost wondered how it would feel to know that you weren’t going to age anymore, weren’t going to change anymore, that your skin would never grow creased and delicate, your hair would not turn brittle white, your hands would stay smooth and strong. He shivered. He wouldn’t like it, looking in the mirror every day and seeing the same face, with none of the sorrow and laughter of life reflected there.

  Ghost’s heart twitched at the thought of Nothing becoming one of those blanks. The other three had faces like stylized masks, smooth and white, with only drunken madness blazing out of their eyes. Even Christian’s face was blank, though a faint frigid sorrow gleamed in his eyes. But Nothing … Nothing’s face was so young, the corners of his mouth so tender, his eyes full of wondrous pain. All that should not be wiped away by immortality.

  But Ghost was here to save Ann, not Nothing. Still, he could not stop hurting for Nothing, no more than he could stop his heart beating. But … Help the ones you love, his grandmother had told him, help them when you can, and after that, mind your business. Your gift doesn’t give you the right to go rearranging other people’s lives for them. You might see their souls, but they won’t always want you to be their mirror.

  Yes, he could see Nothing’s soul. It was in those haunted eyes, and in the shadows under them—fatigue, drink and chemicals, yesterday’s makeup. Nothing was a lost soul because he wanted to be. It was what he had always wanted; it was his birthright.

  But Ann had been bewitched. Done in by the light of chartreuse eyes, by loneliness, by the opium of Zillah’s spit and the poison juices of whatever grew inside her.

  And what was that? All along, Ghost had been thinking of the baby as a dark lump of blood, the seed of Ann’s death. And it was. But it was also Nothing’s brother or sister, and Nothing was not evil. Only lost, as surely lost as Ann’s child would soon be.

  Ghost imagined himself trapped in the womb, his soft bones crumbling, the poison searing his raw new skin away. The poison he and Steve had asked Arkady to make. Had ended up giving Arkady twenty dollars to make.

  Ghost leaned against a wall and closed his eyes. There were a million sides to everything. Most people were able to block out some of them. Ghost sometimes thought he saw them all—not that it helped.

  “Come in and kiss me …” whispered a voice that seemed to emanate from within the wall.

  He jumped and opened his eyes. Voices from nowhere made him more nervous than usual these days, but this hadn’t sounded like the voice in the closet: it was faint and dry, almost too tiny to hear, like the voice of an insect.

  When the voice didn’t speak again, Ghost looked around and found himself lost. He didn’t even seem to be in the French Quarter anymore. To his back were forbidding, scorched-looking apartment towers. A wide, busy avenue stretched in front of him; a small gate opened in the wall to his left. He slipped through the gate and entered the city of the dead.

  Ghost had heard about the cemeteries of New Orleans. The groundwater here was so high that the coffins had to be entombed above ground. There was no real earth to bury them in; if you tried to dig a hole, it would quickly turn into a pit of oozing mud. A heavy rain could float coffins and corpses to the surface. But nothing he’d heard had prepared him for the blinding whitewashed landscape of Saint Louis Number One, possibly the oldest cemetery in the city, certainly the gaudiest and most haphazardly arranged.

  There were coffins bricked into the walls, layer upon layer. That was the first thing Ghost noticed. Some of the brickwork had collapsed, and he could see ashy shadows within the wall, the occasional glint of sunlight on bone, brick, or broken glass. No wonder there were voices in these walls. At his feet a maze of narrow pathways stretched away into the necropolis.

  Farther in, he was amazed at how tightly packed together the tombs were. In some places he had to turn sideways and squeeze between them. High peaked vaults loomed over the path. Tall iron crosses jabbed into the sky, bristled along the tops of the intricate ironwork fences that bordered several plots. Almost all the tombs were white—made of moon-pale marble, silvery granite, or whitewashed brick—and the sunlight upon them dazzled Ghost’s eyes.

  Against all the whiteness a thousand bits of color swarmed. There were flowers everywhere, plaster Virgins and saints with gaily painted robes, colored-glass tumblers full of rainwater, copper and silver coins embedded in cement. Some of the ironwork fences around the graves fluttered with ribbons; others were hung with rosaries or Mardi Gras beads.

  Ghost passed a tomb chalked with hundreds of red X’s in groups of three. He stopped and looked at it for a long moment. At first it gave him no feeling at all; it might have been empty. Then suddenly he knew what he was supposed to do. Chips of brick and nubs of red chalk were scattered near the base of the tomb. Ghost picked one up, turned three times around, and carefully inscribed his own three X’s on the door of the tomb. “I wish I knew where Ann was,” he said. His lips barely moved, but even the softest whisper seemed to bounce off the tombs and echo along the empty paths.

  Then he closed his eyes and listened with all his heart. When the presence came into his head, he was ready for it.

  It was a greedy spirit, and an arrogant one. In fact, it remin
ded him of no one so much as Arkady Raventon—but without Arkady’s weak flesh, without his craven lust. This was a spirit like a flaming ebony arrow. Look behind you, it said. That was all. Then it was gone. Ghost stepped backward and almost hit his head on the overhanging doorway of another tomb.

  Then, very slowly, he turned his head and looked behind him.

  Nothing there but gleaming white walls and flowers trembling in the breeze.

  Feeling stupid, obscurely tricked, Ghost headed back the way he had come. But after a couple of minutes he realized he was no longer on the same path. That made him feel even more stupid, because the tomb with the red X’s had been less than twenty feet inside the gate. He was sure of it. How could he have gotten turned around? This path led deeper into the cemetery.

  Soon there were tombs on all sides of him, and he had no idea which path led toward the gate. The tombs in the center of the cemetery must be taller; that was why they seemed to tower above him, soaring up into the bright cloudless sky. Over the edge of the far wall reared the dark mass of the apartment blocks … the projects, he realized. It was probably dangerous to be in here alone. The night before, when they were walking down the dark street that led back to Arkady’s, Steve had talked morosely about the crime in New Orleans. Little kids would run up and shoot you in the head, then rifle through your pockets. At least that was what Steve said.

  The path twisted deeper in. Now the sky was a bristling forest of iron crosses. Granite peaks wavered overhead, seemed to bow over the path. The tombs pressed closer. Ghost wedged himself between two of them. For one horrible moment he was stuck. Soft brick crumbled away. Something wriggled against his back. He felt his shirt rip.

  Then he pulled free. He half-ran, half-stumbled into an open area where the tombs were lower and squarer, the tallest ones only shoulder-high.