Lost Souls

by Poppy Z. Brite

  “This door?” Steve asked. There were three.

  “Yeah, but—” Ghost stared at the door. He had thought the room would be empty, but it didn’t feel empty.

  Steve twisted the knob and gave the door a vicious kick with the toe of his boot. It swung open, and before Ghost could react, Steve had stepped inside.

  It was even darker in the apartment. Steve couldn’t see the bed or its two shadowy occupants until he was upon them. His knees hit the edge of the mattress, and he nearly lost his balance. Only the thought of falling into bed with two vampires steadied him.

  The room reeked of blood and vomit. Steve’s stomach clenched, and all the beer he had drunk earlier threatened to make itself known to him again. But he was past being sick. There was another smell too, something herbal and alcoholic. It was coming, he realized, from one of the figures on the bed. It was on his breath.

  Steve pulled the knife out. The haft felt good in his hand, heavy and sure. It would cleave straight through the motherfucker’s heart—blood for Ann’s blood. And then he would keep carving. He would take out as many of them as he could.

  The weight of the knife tugged at Steve’s arm, as if the thin sharp blade were hungry for blood. A thread of doubt touched him. Blood for blood: that was right. But somewhere in him he knew that this was not the one who had killed Ann. This was not Zillah. Did they all have to die for Zillah’s sins?

  Steve wavered, nearly dropped the knife. But then the demon in his mind began to whisper. Not his old familiar demon. This was a new one, darker and more twisted, with a dark shapeless mouth and eyes that wept blood. Ann died like a roadkill, it told him. And you know it was your fault. Fuck what Ghost says, you know the part you played. If you can’t do this, you might as well carry her bloody corpse back to Missing Mile slung over your shoulders.

  Steve’s hands tightened convulsively around the haft of the knife. The sharp facets of the jewels cut into his palms. Zillah was somewhere in this room, he knew that. And Zillah would be next.

  Then the demon was pulling his arms down, and Steve screamed his exultant rage as the blade cracked the vampire’s breastbone and sank into his soft dark heart.

  Nothing struggled to wake up. Something was wrong. His body felt sheathed in dry sweat, and he could not force his eyelids open.

  He had been so sick from Wallace’s blood. They all had. The smell of vomit was still strong in the room, vomit and Chartreuse and beer …

  No one had drunk beer tonight. That much he was certain of. Nothing managed to open his eyes.

  He had just enough time to see Steve standing over the bed, his face terrified but crazily exultant, his arms raised high above his head—and then Nothing saw the blade plunge down into Christian’s body beside him. Christian’s black blood arced up from his chest, splattering the moonlight, soaking into the carpet to mingle with the faded blood of Jessy.

  The impact brought Christian up from sleep.

  For a moment there was pain, deep and cold. But compared with the sickness he had felt earlier, the pain was not very bad. It was like being adrift on a river, one that smelled of mud and bones like the Mississippi, but this river was green. Its gentle luminescence bathed him and soaked through him. At last he was drunk. The river made him drunk, and his mind grew dim and began to rest.

  Heartblood welled up in his mouth, and he licked it from his lips. The taste was sweet, dark, familiar, and it would stay with him forever; it was the essence of him. Through the bright film that washed over his eyes, he saw a face above him: translucent hair hanging like a waterfall, pale eyes wide and stricken.

  As Christian sank beneath the green waters of his death, he thought, Three hundred and eighty-three years. And he was as beautiful as he should have been. He was lovely.

  There were too many words in Ghost’s mouth, ready to spill into the silence of the room. Murderer, he wanted to say, my best friend, my only brother. I once saw you run your car off the road to keep from hitting a stray dog. How could you stab someone through the heart? How could you bear it as you looked into his eyes?

  But in the end he didn’t say any of those words, because the silence erupted around them.

  Ghost had come up beside the bed. He was standing a little behind Steve, and he never saw Zillah coming. Steve must have seen him, because he stepped backward.

  There was only a heart-stopping blur of motion launching itself out of the darkness. Then the razor flashed, and every speck of light in the room seemed to coalesce along its deadly edge. Wetness hit Ghost’s face, hot and stinging. The taste was in his mouth, in his throat. Blood. Steve’s blood, spraying.

  Zillah had Steve around the chest, forcing him down. Steve bucked and clawed at him. But Zillah’s free hand had the razor, and now it was swinging down, toward Steve’s throat.

  The knife still protruded from Christian’s chest, jewels glittering dully in the faint light. Ghost reached out and pulled it free. Christian’s heart made a faint sucking sound as the blade came away. Blood seeped from the wound.

  Ghost felt that he moved in slow motion: the razor was still swinging down. He took two steps forward. Easily, he slid his left arm around Zillah’s neck; effortlessly he pulled Zillah’s chin up and back.

  Then he drove the knife straight into Zillah’s temple, and that was the hardest thing he had ever done.

  Nothing saw it all. He was still on the bed, half-propped on his elbows, naked except for the vomit-stained sheet that covered him. He saw Steve bring the knife down into Christian’s chest, and he had not even had time to react to that when Zillah flew like a demented bat out of the corner and whipped his razor across Steve’s upraised forearms.

  Then the most extraordinary thing of all happened: Ghost took the knife, stepped forward, and lifted Zillah straight off the floor. He only had one arm around Zillah’s neck, but Nothing saw Zillah’s feet dangling an inch above the floorboards. Ghost hoisted Zillah around so that he was facing the bed.

  And Zillah’s eyes met Nothing’s as the knife went in.

  There was no love in them, no sorrow. Only pain and blame and blind rage. This was not the way Zillah had planned it. Through all the stupid risks he took he had never considered the possibility of his own death. This is your fault, those eyes told Nothing. You brought me to this, and this should be happening to you.

  Then the green light blazed once and went out. Zillah’s eyes were as dead as a blown light bulb. But their message had burned itself into Nothing, had hardened him faster and better than anything else could.

  Zillah’s feet kicked and shuffled an inch above the floor. Blood began to seep around the handle of the knife, then from his nostrils and the corners of his eyes. His mouth fell open, and a fountain of blood tumbled down his chin, washed over Ghost’s arm and hand. That seemed to wake Ghost. The strain of Zillah’s weight hit him, and he let the body fall. He stared unbelievingly at his hands.

  “Steve?” he said in a small voice. “What …?”

  Steve was slumped against the bed. He had taken off his shirt and was pressing it between his arms, trying to stop the bleeding from his slashed wrists. Tiredly, he looked up at Ghost.

  “I owe you another one,” he said.

  Nothing glanced around the room. Where were Molochai and Twig? He saw them huddled against the far wall, heard them puking more violently than ever. He didn’t know if they had seen Zillah die. Right now they sounded as if they were beyond caring.

  He looked at Ghost. Ghost stared back. His eyes were clear and very pale.

  “I could kill you, you know,” Nothing heard himself say. “I could make them get up and kill you.”

  Ghost didn’t move. “I know you could.”

  “I could make them kill both of you.”

  “It’ll be me first, then,” said Ghost.

  Nothing looked at Zillah’s body sprawled on the floor. Rivulets of blood crawled along the cracks between the floorboards where Zillah’s head had fallen. He thought of never feeling those strong vei
ned hands on him again, of never kissing that lush mouth.

  He thought of never again having anyone tell him what to do.

  “Take that thing out of him,” he said.

  Ghost knelt and pulled the knife out of Zillah’s skull. He had to wiggle the blade free, but Nothing didn’t look away. The knife left a clean narrow wound in Zillah’s temple. A pale, slightly cloudy fluid began to trickle from it.

  “Now get out,” said Nothing.

  Steve and Ghost only stared at him.

  “NOW. If they get up, I’ll let them kill you. They loved Zillah too.” Nothing wasn’t sure if he meant this. Could he really watch Steve and Ghost die, even now? He thought of the cold message he had seen in Zillah’s eyes and wondered whether he would ever have known the truth if Zillah had lived.

  Still, his father had loved him in his way. In the way of decadence and self-gratification. But even that was worth something. Nothing was amazed at how calm he felt. He never knew his face was wet with tears.

  Life was his now. When he was on the road he would want to think about Steve and Ghost, to know they were alive somewhere. He hadn’t wanted Ann’s baby to die either, not really. It would have been his brother or his sister. He would have taken care of it. He would have held it on his knees so it could look out the windows of the van and dabbed wine and blood on its soft little gums.

  He knew Ann must be dead. Why else would Steve have come on this murdering rampage? But if he never asked, he would be able to pretend the baby was alive somewhere, growing up without its family just as he had done. Maybe someday they’d be driving along some country road and suddenly there would be Zillah’s child, Nothing’s brother or sister, sticking out a hopeful thumb.

  Maybe.

  “Go on,” he told Ghost more gently. “Steve’s hurt. Get him to a hospital. Take him home.”

  Ghost pulled Steve up, and they left without a word. Nothing didn’t watch them go. He had enough goodbyes to say.

  Toward morning, when the sky was beginning to go from purple to transparent violet, Molochai and Twig awakened from their nauseated daze. At first they were frightened when they saw the bodies. Then they got mad, but Nothing only clamped his arms across his chest and stared them down.

  “Zillah would have killed them,” said Twig sullenly.

  “Zillah tried,” said Nothing. He knew how cold his words sounded. But if he could make Molochai and Twig feel his power now, in these first few minutes, he did not think they would challenge him again.

  “I did it the way I wanted to,” he told them, and no one had anything to say to that.

  All of them knew what to do for their dead. There was not much blood left in Christian’s body; the tapered blade of the knife had pierced his heart and crushed it, and most of his blood had drained into the mattress. They licked what they could from his face, his hands, his chest. They sucked at the edges of the wound. With a wet snuffling sound, Molochai buried his face in the hole the knife had made. He nibbled at Christian’s torn heart and pronounced it bitter.

  Tenderly they laid Zillah out on the bed and used his pearl-handled razor to slit him open from sternum to pubic bone. Nothing saw strangely shaped organs glistening in the pale aperture. They lifted the organs out and arranged them carefully, lovingly, on the bed around him. Then, one by one, they thrust their heads into the long wound and licked the husk of Zillah clean.

  As the sun rose, shedding its wan light upon the proud old buildings of the French Quarter and the trash in its gutters, they left Christian’s room and filed down the stairs. The black van was parked two blocks away. Nothing hated to leave so soon. He had spent only two nights here, one of them puking his guts out. It wasn’t fair.

  He smiled, though it barely touched his lips. Fair? How long had it been since he expected things to be fair? If you wanted something, you didn’t wait for the world to deal it out to you; you took it. If he had learned nothing else during his time with Zillah, he had learned that. And anyway, it didn’t matter that he had to leave New Orleans so soon. The city was in his blood. He would be back; there was always time.

  Nothing had left his long black raincoat behind, draped over the bodies like a shroud. In its place he wore Zillah’s jacket with its purple silk lining. The fresh bloodstains were like badges. The smell of them twisted his heart, but he wore them with pride.

  Just before they left the room, Nothing had pulled the shade up. As the first ray of light touched the bodies of Zillah and Christian, their flesh began to smolder and crumble. In less than an hour it was only ash.

  34

  Steve got his arms stitched and bandaged at Charity Hospital on the edge of the French Quarter. The doctors on duty in the emergency room suspected a suicide attempt, but Steve kept telling his story over and over, and Ghost kept backing him up. They’d been out drinking; a gang of kids had jumped them; one of the kids pulled a razor. Steve flung his arms up to protect his face and got slashed.

  They had to talk to a policeman, and Ghost could see Steve getting ready to break down: it was in the corners of his mouth, the way his shoulders sagged. Ghost closed his eyes and tried to send Steve strength. At last they were allowed to go.

  For a few minutes they stood outside the hospital in the cool dawn. Steve stared at his gauze-swathed arms. “If I wanted to kill myself,” he muttered, “I wouldn’t have slashed my goddamn wrists like some kind of half-assed moron.” Ghost started walking back toward the car. After a moment Steve followed. “I’d get a shotgun. Straight through the brain.” Ghost shuddered, but Steve didn’t notice. “Or I’d drive up to the mountains and run my car over a guardrail. A thousand feet down and BAM! you’re spread out over a mile of rocks.”

  They reached the car. Steve stood staring around him, seeming to search for something in the faces of the old buildings, maybe just having a final look at the place that had claimed so much from him. Ghost wondered if they would ever come back here.

  Ghost drove all the way back to Missing Mile. The muscles of his shoulders and upper arms were sore. The palms of his hands tingled faintly, and he kept wiping them on his knees, on the fabric of the seat. Again and again he felt the knife going into Zillah’s skull, the terrible lack of resistance as it slid through Zillah’s brain. He had heard Zillah’s final shriek of rage and agony in his mind. He’d had to do it; Steve would be dead now if he hadn’t, his throat sliced wide open and his life bled away. Still Ghost felt the knife going in.

  Somewhere in the Louisiana swamps Steve said, “Pull over.” Ghost killed the ignition. In the dark phosphorescence of the swamp Steve’s tears shone as clear and bright as crystal. Blindly he reached for Ghost, pressed his face into Ghost’s hair, rubbed his hands over Ghost’s face, gathered the fabric of Ghost’s clothes between his fingers. “You’re here,” he gasped. “I know you’re here—I can feel you—I can smell you—you’re not gonna go away—”

  “Steve,” said Ghost, “oh, Steve …” He could hardly speak. Just to hold each other was not enough; again he wished that their hearts could be joined. Maybe that would clean some of the blood from their hands.

  Back in Missing Mile they were a little puzzled when their friends did not greet them with astonishment. It was hard to realize that they had only been gone a few days. Terry told them that Simon Bransby had been found dead in an easy chair in his living room. The house, Terry said with mild bemusement, was full of crazy shit—cat guts pickled in formaldehyde, terrariums full of toads that bounced off the glass as if they were tripping on high-grade acid. Simon had died of a Valium overdose, and everybody thought it was suicide, presumably because his only daughter had finally left home for good.

  Ann was never heard from, and only a handful of people in Missing Mile—R.J., Terry, Monica—knew anything about what had happened to her. Not even they knew the whole tale.

  * * *

  They discovered that even in the face of pain that seems unbearable, even in the face of pain that wrings the last drop of blood out of your heart and le
aves its scrimshaw tracery on the inside of your skull, life goes on. And pain grows dull, and begins to fade.

  Steve went back to work at the Whirling Disc, played his guitar obsessively. Kinsey Hummingbird hired him to tend bar a couple of times a week at the Sacred Yew. Sometimes Steve would start screaming in the night. He would wake sobbing, clawing at the darkness in front of his face. Ghost held him and tried to warm the chill of nightmare out of his bones.

  By day, Ghost wandered around town picking up leaves and bits of colored glass, talking to the old men who had moved their checker game inside the hardware store for winter. They kidded him about the bad times he’d said were coming, but stopped when they saw the look on his face.

  One day he rode his bike out to Miz Catlin’s and told her everything. At the end of the hour it took him, he was sobbing. Miz Catlin patted his hand and said the things Ghost had known she would say: she believed it, every word, and his grandmother would be proud of him.

  Then she told him something he hadn’t known. “That Raventon fellow was a fake and a liar.”

  “Huh?”

  “Pennyroyal, yarrow, brooklime.” Miz Catlin flapped a wrinkled hand. “All those things are good to start a pessary with, but they wouldn’t do a damn thing together. Not strong enough. The girl would have died anyway, Ghost.”

  Ghost wondered. But when he was lying awake at night, staring at the stars on his ceiling and thinking about everything, Miz Catlin’s words made him feel better.

  One December day Ghost found himself out on Violin Road near the trailer where Christian and the others had lived. The tangle of rosebushes still grew wild in the backyard, and though Missing Mile was deep in winter, one rose blossomed in the heart of the thicket. When Ghost reached for it, a thorn sank like a tooth into the ball of his thumb. Bright drops of his blood spattered the frozen ground.

  “Blood for blood,” he whispered. Again he remembered how the knife had felt going into Zillah’s skull.