Stainless

by Todd Grimson

  He has done terrible things, and suffered the accidental fate of being confined for twenty years. He went into a coma, he was as if dead, he became desiccated, and ugly, but he is alive. He would probably have starved to death in there pretty soon. That stupid Olga. If she’s alive, she will pay.

  But now, he needs to bathe in blood.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  The writer says, “I appreciate your talking to me. Michael Stein, Keith’s friend, said that he doesn’t know what has happened to Keith in the last year or so, but that he thought you might have some idea, if anyone would.”

  “I see,” Tamara says. “Now explain it to me again: you’re writing an article about Renata Spengler, something like that?”

  “I have a contract for a book, with a substantial advance. I’m pretty far into it. I got a lot of good information for instance from Renata’s roommate at Syracuse. But as you can imagine, it’s really crucial that I talk to Keith.”

  ‘Well, I don’t know where he is, but as a matter of fact I did see him a little while back. I’m not sure it would be that good for him to rake over all that stuff again, you know—it pretty much ruined his life.”

  “I can understand that,” the writer says. “But on the other hand, it might be good for him, a purging. Plus I think I need to hear his side of it. Gilberto Reyes has been saying recently that it wasn’t suicide, that he thinks Keith killed her after one of their fights.”

  “That’s so completely ridiculous. Reyes is crazy.”

  “Well, I don’t especially believe him, but I feel like I need to get something from Keith.”

  Tamara thinks it over. She’s in her office, charts piled up, white jacket on. She looks at the writer and says, “I’ll call him and tell him about you. But I don’t think he’ll want to talk to you, so don’t get your hopes up.”

  “You know his phone number? Why don’t I call him myself? Maybe we could just talk a little over the phone?”

  “No,” Tamara says. “I won’t be a party to any ambush.”

  “I’m sorry if it sounds like that. But I’m awfully far into the process, I have a lot of material, and without something from him there’ll be this big hole at the middle.”

  “I’ll tell him about it. Why did you decide to write a book about Renata anyway?”

  “I had met her, several times, and interviewed her. When she died I was … it just seemed so tragic. Everyone who knew her still thinks about her. I mentioned it to my editor, and before I knew it … I think it’s going to be the best thing I’ve ever done.”

  “I’ll tell Keith. I’m sorry, but I go through so many names—”

  “Eric Zimmerman.”

  Tamara doesn’t like him, and he senses this. A thirty-six-year-old guy, successful without being well known, who’s into any new fashion, anything new in music, and who is also a relative expert on serial killers and bizarre crime. There could be a movie deal connected to this book, so nothing is going to stop him from finding this washed-up guitar player, nothing. Whatever it takes. Lord knows he has his ways.

  One reason Tamara doesn’t like him is that he’s left his sunglasses on while here in the domain of the hospital, this seems to her especially affected and vain.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Michelle has the van this afternoon. She dropped Jason off at the record store, and now she’s come up here. She presses the buzzer. It’s funny. She didn’t necessarily think she was coming here to fuck, but now, as she sees Keith walk into view, she feels a warmth, and she suddenly wants to very much.

  “Let me in,” she says.

  “No,” he replies. “I don’t want to see you today.”

  Taken aback, it takes her a moment to rejoin, “Why not?”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea. If you still want to, maybe you can come back some other time.”

  “Asshole,” she says, as he walks back up the drive and into the house. She’s quite angry at him. It doesn’t occur to her till she’s driven some miles that maybe he thinks he can treat her like this because he loaned her some money. Oh, she’s furious now. She drives over to the Saint Agatha house, listening to a Skinny Puppy tape. The singer says, “Torture” That’s the only word she hears, the only word she understands.

  Crying a little has made her mascara run. She tries to fix it, contemplatively, taking her time in the rearview mirror. Then she goes in the Saint Agatha house, and since Fred isn’t there, she acts seductive around Tim, the programmer-synthesizer whiz. He offers her a hit from a joint. She drinks a Coke, and Tim plays her some of the band’s unmixed tapes. She listens to him talk about this and that. The atmosphere isn’t sexual, not now. The music, in its unfinished state, is more interesting to her than when they doll it up. The robotic chunka-chunka is so loud it functions as a drug.

  And when Fred arrives, his obvious suffering cheers her up. She likes him like this.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Two young women, naked, lie on the tile floor, deeply entranced, ugly raw bites on their necks. Their eyes show nothing. They wait to be bitten again.

  The light coming in here makes the flesh look yellowish, ochre where there’s some tan. One of the young women is Japanese. It is daylight. David sleeps.

  Sabrina comes in, desultorily kneels, and begins to scrub blood off the floor. She too is in a kind of trance, but she can think. Slowly. It takes an effort. She is not able to form any thoughts counter to David’s freshly imposed will. It’s like she’s on strong tranquilizers or anti-psychotic drugs. Numb, yes, but not a peaceful or pleasant numbness.

  She scrubs for about an hour, and then stops. She does not notice the big stain she has missed. She gets up, and begins picking up these people’s clothing, which has all been thrown over against one wall. It does not occur to her to look in wallets for money, nor does she feel any curiosity about checking I.D. to find out names. The Japanese woman says something, but Sabrina does not listen or try to understand. She needs to burn the clothes. And then, spend a couple hours making herself up, preparing for David and the night.

  The household staff and gardeners have all been dismissed. New servants have not yet been engaged. David wants to put on plays here, stage private spectacles, like he did in this house in the past. He has been a presence here, it seems, for some time.

  Chase is functioning better than she is, though David orders him about with more contempt. Chase is able to carry on more or less normally, at least on the telephone. He welcomes what David brings, as he understands it, or chooses to see it. David brings everlasting life. Things just need to be properly managed and arranged, and Chase need never die.

  The spell, or venom injected, affects Sabrina differently. At first it made her very sick. She fights it, Chase tells her. Why not go with it? He will make us like him. We don’t have to die. Sabrina has always feared aging, hated it, but she doesn’t know if she so fears death itself. Maybe she does. She doesn’t know.

  David has had intercourse with her, when he’s been hot, glutted with blood. David is capable of some kind of inward orgasm, intromission, without ejaculating. He strips everyone, once they are in here, secure.

  He needed a great quantity of blood the first few days. His skin needed to soak in it. He washed his face with it. The victims—he calls them his “children”—are beheaded when they are of no further use. There is a Confederate officer’s sword, finely balanced, out of the theatrical props found in the secret room. This is what David uses. He has them kneel, and becomes angry if he cannot separate head from body with a single stroke. One such person he hacked at savagely for some time. It was so nearly bled dry, the fellow’s new, severe lacerations did not bleed. The flaps of skin tore back. The cuts just seeped clear fluid.

  David picks up some of the heads and talks to them, smoothing out their hair, addressing them fondly, once even with tears in his voice. “Look how pretty she is,” he said to Sabrina. “I think I love her best of all.” Sabrina gazed into the vacant eyes of the young Hispanic woman, and agreed, “
You’re right. She is the best so far.”

  Chase is out buying a boat. Then, at night, the bodies and heads, in black plastic, can be taken aboard. And then, weighted down, dropped off out at sea. No trace left. Sharks will have something to eat. Killers. Swim.

  The pace has slowed in recent days. David is reinvigorated. He looks younger, better. He hints that he may be terrifically old, that he was alive when the Romans fed Christians to the lions before bloodthirsty crowds.

  “I can remember, times long in the past … I see them as clearly as if they are in a film. That is what I see, those scenes, all during the day when I am at rest.”

  FORTY

  The secret room was built in the 1920s, for William Howard Sturdevant, to hide bootleg liquor. He planned to sell Canadian whiskey, but his plans came to naught. It wasn’t worth it. The competition with gangsters was too fierce.

  Although David entered the house in 1938 or so, and had some disciples there, he did not know about the secret room until 1966, when he came back and moved in. For several years, little changed. There were all kinds of runaways around, more than ever, and after disposing of the pianist, Anton Roubatieff, he toyed with mother and daughter, having them perform acts on each other for his edification. He eventually made Caroline Severance a vampire, and together they put on midnight plays, or “happenings,” spectacles utilizing hippie kids that Olga recruited, giving acid to them, as she operated under David’s lightest spell.

  Some of these hippies came to feel great reverence for David, and he enjoyed this. His hypnotic powers, sans bite, were quite profound. Visions were experienced that were as much a revelation to him as anyone else.

  But he grew careless. He might not have injected his serum often enough into Olga, he didn’t pay enough attention to her. His spell waned. There were other things going on, black masses for instance, and he allowed too many strangers around. Caroline Severance killed some boy Olga thought herself in love with, and a few days later, Olga and some of the hippies exposed Caroline to the sun, hideously burning her to death. David was chained within his oblong box.

  Olga had been taking so much acid, besides constantly, every day, smoking pot, that she was unable to give a good account of herself to the authorities. That much seems to be clear. Does she now, wherever she is, really believe in what happened, or did they blank out her brain with electroshock, Librium, and Stelazine? Where is she now?

  Chase, agreeably, has hired a detective to track her down. If she is not close by, she’s safe. Otherwise, David will see. Maybe he could spare her, in spite of everything, like a Christ.

  Chase talks to Sabrina as if he will master all systems of philosophy, as if living for hundreds of years must eventually bring perfect wisdom, as if he’ll be a living Buddha, a prophet, sustained by his fellow man’s blood. As though eventually, as one of the living dead, he will transcend his body, his flesh, his very form. He will become God. All he needs is more time. Unlimited time.

  David has driven around several nights, exploring, seeing how people live these days. You can only learn so much from TV. It’s interesting to spy without being seen, even when there’s no suitable prey. He is curious. In the shadows, he watches people live, talk, fight, go out, undress, go to bed, and he has no desire to interfere, he just wants to completely disappear. To be less than a fly. A spot of dirt. At such times he loses his will, and is languid, almost unable to force himself out of the light before dawn. Arriving panting at his box, intentionally having stretched it out to the last minute, taunting the risk of burning, David wonders how Justine stands it, how she does it, what she thinks about during the blank, utterly blank, endless night. Where is she? He knows she is somewhere not far.

  A vast sadness settles over his crypt like a gigantic moon made of lead. He stares all day, unblinking, at the unseeing face of this lead moon.

  FORTY-ONE

  “Do you remember when you first met me?” Justine asks.

  “Sure. You asked me if I had a light, and when you smoked I noticed you didn’t inhale. You waited for me to do something, and then you offered to buy me a drink.”

  “And you said, okay, but you had to meet someone at your apartment in fifteen minutes. Then you looked into my eyes and said, Do you want to come with me? It won’t take very long. I said, All right, and then … you warned me that it was a drug deal, if that bothered me.”

  “You smiled,” Keith says, “and shook your head.”

  She smiles now, a slow-developing, seraphic smile. They are watching a vampire movie on late night TV. Keith has his arm around her, she rests her head on his shoulder, looking up into his face from time to time.

  This man and his daughter visit the castle of the Count. The man is a philosopher, a scientist, a scholar, and he talks with the Count in front of a roaring fire in the fireplace. He seems to understand what the Count is, but to believe that he will not be harmed. The sacredness of the guest. But he is wrong. Servants come in the early morning hours and murder him with an axe. They then throw his body into an adjacent, deep blue lake.

  The daughter, who seems about sixteen, is now naked upon her bed. She is dead. The Count turns to the camera, panting. The whites of his eyes have gone red.

  During the commercial, Justine says, “I tried to starve myself. I thought I could starve myself to death. That way, I would avoid further mortal sin. I stayed in my cave, and every night was a torment, the pain and the hunger were so awful, I couldn’t stand it. I would tell myself, just one more night. I was too weak.” Keith kisses her forehead, as though in absolution. She says, “I lasted forty-nine days. Then, one night, it was raining, and I found these two soldiers, sleeping by a fire near the entrance. So I bit them both, I killed them. Another time, I tried to linger in the morning sunlight, but it hurt too much. I couldn’t make it anywhere near true dawn.”

  The movie is dubbed, presumably from German, much of it evidently shot in a real, very impressive castle. The son comes looking for his father and sister, and finds that the local officials, the nineteenth-century police, are in the pay of the Count. The son’s best friend is attacked with an axe, his arm cut off at the shoulder. It’s a violent film. The sister, Natasha, appears, a vampire herself. Her brother tries to talk to her. Incestuously seductive, she is sweet, but then breaks the spell and shows her fangs. He drives a stake through her heart.

  Justine watches intently. The evil servant who wielded the axe is killed, stabbed what seems about twenty times, over and over, each stab wound making an audible thwunk, as he gasps blood.

  The Count, of course, will not escape. He is transpierced on a giant spike, writhing, the spike coming out through his chest in the area of his heart. Then he crumbles away, gradually, in dated special effects, until he is a skeleton, with red eyes and gaping jaw. And he dissolves into bluish dust.

  The last scene is of the sister, at peace now in death, a wreath of garlic around her neck. The coffin is closed and nailed shut, lowered into the grave. Dirt falls into the hole, covering red roses, rose petals. Then we see the brother, mourning, and his friend, who lost his arm. The music is still ominous as the credits begin.

  “That’s sad,” Justine says. “Ludwig loved his sister. It seems to me she was his one true love. He will never be happy again.”

  “No,” Keith says. They agree.

  “Why don’t you invite Tamara to come visit?” Justine says, after a while. The doctor had called, earlier, about 9:00. Keith told Justine about this Eric Zimmerman, and that Tamara wants to see for herself how he lives. Justine at that time had shrugged, and said, “I am doing nothing to her. It’s been long enough—I have no power over her by this time.”

  Now when she repeats this idea, having her visit, Keith decides, why not? If Justine has ulterior motives, he might as well see what they are. He truly does not believe she will bite Dr. Rothschild again. It’s almost more like she wants to play at being “normal” for one evening.

  Earlier today, Keith had a dream. He tells it to Justi
ne. He had an appointment in an office building, and when he went in, he saw all the people he’d gone to high school with. They all worked there, in this office, in the government, bureaucrats or something. Civil servants. Most of them seemed happy, at their desks or walking around. Keith went down one long aisle, turned left, then came back toward the entrance, glass doors against the endless dark. He saw faces he had not thought of for years. Faces he remembered well. As he walked amongst them, however, he came to realize that he was invisible. Or at any rate, no one could see him. He saw Craig Enloe laughing with Melissa Kent. He experienced such an anguish, a nostalgia, as he saw that he was no longer someone who could exist within their world.

  “Come here,” Justine says, and he returns to the couch, where she holds him. His face is luminous as, after he kisses her, he suddenly bites her on the neck, rather hard.

  “Do that again,” she says. Instead, he pulls down the thin straps of her lacy white slip, and he bites one bared breast.

  “Harder,” she says. The new feeling is a revelation to her. Keith bites her left nipple, hard. She likes it. The seraphic expression melts into something more carnal; her mouth is open, and she groans.

  How did he know that this would work, biting her like this? Justine’s face dissolves. He knows enough not to go on biting again and again. No, but that insight, or tease, serves the purpose of gaining her body’s attention, and there is a radiance, a warming from within.

  FORTY-TWO

  She takes great care with her appearance, with her makeup and clothes. In recent years, she has come to take more and more pleasure in new clothes. With money, places will let you come in at midnight—anything’s possible when you have money. Before inheriting, “legally,” a fortune from Max Durand, she variously robbed people as she needed to get by, putting them under her spell so that they were happy to go to the bank and come back with some cash.