I gather up her clothes, breathe and cherish the scent of her they still carry, and place them in a pile near the door. Then I pick up her small cloth purse and search through it, removing any change, finding a surprising three hundred and eighty-six dollars in bills in her wallet.
The money goes in the top drawer of my dresser—the purse on top of the pile of clothes. I look through her wallet one last time before I drop it on the pile too, gaze at the pictures inside and wonder who the people are in the photographs she carried, whether they will mourn her passage too. One picture catches my attention especially. Maria, in a bikini, a little younger than now, sitting on the deck of a Hobie catamaran, being embraced by a young man with piercing black eyes and a large, drooping mustache. The man also wears only a bathing suit and the boat's yellow-and-white, diagonally striped mainsail is behind them. A rush of jealousy hits me and, for a moment, I hate that person. Then I realize how much the man looks like Maria and I think, this must be Jorge. I blush that I could be jealous of a brother's hug.
I drop the wallet and the pictures on top of the pile of clothing. All of it will be reduced to ashes before the end of day.
By now the sun has begun to burn its way into my room. Blinking at its brightness, hating the glare of it on the dead body on my bed, I scoop Maria up and carry her to my door. I shudder at her lifelessness and weep as I take her through the inner doors to the dim interior of the house.
Had she lived, I would have shown her the wide corridor that circles the great spiral staircase which services all the floors of the house. Now I barely glance up as I walk around the corridor to the massive heavy oak doors that open to Father's chamber.
Father's shades are drawn and, no matter the brightness outside, the room remains as dim and murky as the dark middle of the house. He is asleep when I enter, his breathing irregular and shallow. I can make out his form in the shadows of the far corner of the room, a dark shape sprawled on a bed of hay.
I shake my head at the sight of him. There was a time his mere visage could terrify me, but now, he seems to grow a little smaller each time I see him.
In his old age Father has given up shape changing, telling me his natural body is the most efficient way for him to live. And as the years have passed, he's embraced the old ways, refusing to converse out loud, insisting on hay for his bedding, refusing any trace of human craft in his stone-walled, furnitureless room.
"Father?" I mindspeak. "I've brought you something."
The shape turns in my direction, coughs and scratches.
Two emerald-green eyes stare at me. "You shut me off, Peter. There was a time you wouldn't have dared. …"
I return his stare. We both know he's no longer the imposing figure he once was. At best, Father can't be any more than eleven feet long. His color, once as richly green as mine, now has a sickly yellow pallor to it. Age has slowed his movements, buckled and rippled his scales. "I'm sorry, Father," I say.
He hisses, mindspeaks, "Speak properly to me!"
"I'm sorry, Father."
"You should be." Father adjusts himself so he's sitting on one haunch, motions for me to approach. "So, is that what caused you to make such a fuss last night?"
A flush burns my cheeks and I stare directly at this creature that sired me—that brought me into this world where I could never fit. I growl a warning, "Father!"
He waves one taloned claw, as if to smooth away my pain. "Who taught you to be so sensitive? Bring her here. Let me see what you have."
Father clucks with pleasure when I place the body on the hay next to him. "So young. So fresh…" He inspects the carcass, trying to decide, I know, just where to start his meal.
I look away, busy myself opening windows, bringing light into the room as he starts to feed.
"Don't be so skittish," Father says, chuckling. "You're the one whose naked body is covered in her blood."
Shocked, I examine myself, touch the sticky red substance that seems to coat my arms and spot my chest and legs. "I didn't even think about it.…"
Father chuckles again. "It's just blood. It washes off."
I nod, then pace the room as he continues his feast.
When he finishes, he sighs and turns his attention to me. "Tell me, Peter, why such a fuss last night?"
"I didn't want her dead, Father. I liked her. I thought, maybe, I could see her for a while… It gets so lonely sometimes."
"You think I don't know that? I haven't had a wife since your mother's death. You don't see me mooning over some human woman."
"You're old!" I blurt out. Then I say, "Sorry, Father, I'm upset. First the aroma, then Maria's death…"
"Ah, the aroma!" Father chooses to overlook my outburst. He coughs and chuckles at the same time. "You said it smelled of cinnamon and cloves?" I nod.
"Possibly some tinge of musk too?"
"Yes."
"What did it do to you?"
"It drove me crazy," I say. "I wanted sex. I needed to feed. I couldn't control my body.…"
Father claps his hands together. "I told you!" he mind-speaks, his thoughts stronger than before, almost joyous. "I knew it and I told you! "
I glare at the irritating old creature. "And just what is it you've told me ? "
He laughs, claps his hands again, pauses to eat some more, even though he knows the pause will make me more angry, more anxious.
"Didn't I promise that one day you'd meet a woman of the blood?" he asks finally.
"So?"
He ignores my frown, grins at me in an indulgent way, as if I have no capacity for independent thought. I consider walking from the room.
"Peter," he mindspeaks, "you've found your woman."
"What are you talking about?"
Father shakes his head. "The aroma, Peter. The scent! Why do you think it drove you so crazy?"
He guffaws. "She's in heat, son! Oestrus. Our women> come to term every four months once they reach maturity. Before they mate for the first time, for a few days every quarter they fill the sky with their scent. It travels almost forever."
"But where Is she?"
Father shrugs. "She could be anywhere from within one to fifteen hundred miles of us. You're lucky. I had to go to Europe to find your mother."
He absentmindedly picks at the remains lying next to him, breaks a rib bone and sucks the marrow from it. I watch it without flinching, without a thought of Maria. My mind's intent now on the memory of that incredible scent and I try to picture the creature that created it. "How will I find her, Father?"
He taps the side of his snout with one taloned claw. "You'll follow your nose, son. You'll learn how natural it is."
"But, so many miles …"
Father laughs and a paroxysm of coughing and rasping breaths overtakes him. I wait for it to pass.
"I promised you'd find a woman, Peter. I didn't promise it would be easy."
* * *
Chapter 4
« ^ »
The idea of a female of my own kind consumes me, occupies my mind, crowds out all other thoughts. I have dozens of questions, all of which Father ignores. "Later, Peter," he tells me as his head nods and his eyelids close. "Let me rest now. Come to me tonight and we'll talk more."
His breathing turns rhythmic and I know it's useless to try to rouse him. I look at the bones scattered around him, stripped of all meat, and shake my head at his gluttony. I have no choice but to wait for him to sleep past his languor.
The yips and growls of the dogs outside remind me I've much to do. They've caught the aroma of the kill and are waiting now, not so patiently, for their share. I carry the entrails, and the other body parts Father chose not to eat, out onto the veranda and throw them over the parapet to the hungry pack below. Then I return to my room and busy myself with removing all traces of Maria from the house.
As I strip the bloodstained bedding from my mattress, I take extra breaths, hoping to smell some trace of cinnamon in the air, but the air carries only its usual sea smells. What little win
d there is blows light and seems to shift direction every few minutes.
I think about the breezes of the night before, the strong gusts that seemed to have a life of their own and I try to remember if the wind had shifted during the evening too. Surely if I can remember the wind's direction and follow its route backward, it will lead me to her.
Carrying the sheets and Maria's belongings up the spiral staircase to the third floor, I feed them to the fire in the great open hearth. I try to recall where the wind came from during the last evening, but my memory fails me. My attention had been on Maria, not on the bend of the trees' limbs or the direction of the waves. I know that further toward the summer, a southeast wind blows almost every day and night. During the winter, the north wind brings its chilling effect. But in March, the wind could just as easily come from any point of the compass.
I add logs to the blaze, listen to them crack and pop as they catch fire, watch the sheets and Maria's belongings flame, then turn dark and shrivel into ashes.
A weak gust of air blows through the room and I sniff at it expectantly. Nothing.
The wind ruffles the flames in the fireplace and carries away with it a thin trail of smoke as it courses through the remainder of the room, exiting the window opposite the one it entered.
Watching the smoke's passage, I remember the winds blowing through my bedroom the night before, which windows they seemed to favor. I grin and go on with my work, walking to the top of the staircase, grabbing the thick, manila rope wrapped around a large iron cleat bolted to the wall, scooping up the excess line coiled on the floor below it.
A southeast wind! I'm sure of it now, remembering the play of it over our bodies, the windows it entered and exited, and before that the ridges of water rolling northward across the bay. A wind blowing from that direction meant she lived somewhere in the Caribbean or Latin America. I try to picture how exotic she might be.
All of it makes me feel positively adolescent and, for the first time in more years than I care to think, I unwrap the rope from the cleat, grasp it tightly with my right hand and, holding the excess line in my left, jump the railing and launch myself into the open middle of the staircase.
Above me, hanging from a huge hook set in the center of a massive roof beam, an ancient arrangement of wooden blocks and tackle screeches and groans as the rope rushes through it, the line suddenly taut from the heavy burden of my falling body—its motion slowed by the counterweight of the hoist's wooden platform my weight brings up from the bottom floor.
I laugh as the platform rushes past me at the second floor, brace my legs for the rough landing I'm about to make on the first. Judging from the speed of my descent, I must outweigh the platform by at least fifty pounds—a far different disparity than in my younger days, when there was some doubt about which was heavier.
Mother used to hate when I attempted it, insisting Father discipline me. Which he did, a sparkle in his eyes telling me he might like to try it too.
The impact of the landing makes me grunt and I laugh out loud, look up at the wood platform swaying in the air three stories above me. I move out from underneath it and slowly let the line play out until the platform clunks down in front of me. Out of force of habit I tie the line off, even though the rope's slack and the platform's now resting on the bottom floor of the house.
It's quiet here, a place of still air and dark gloom. The light that shines so brightly on the second and third floors seems to wane before it reaches this low. Away from the center of the room everything belongs to the shadows.
I force myself into the dark and run my hands over the rough stone wall until I feel the light switch. Its click echoes in the stillness and, for a moment, when the dim lights come on, the bare bulbs pushing light into all the shadows, I lose touch of the giddiness that has overtaken me and feel silly, a little ashamed, to be standing naked and barefoot in this place, still splattered with her blood.
This floor is the dark underbelly of the house and I know too well the secrets it holds. Here Don Henri built three supply rooms and eight prison cells. Long ago I turned one of the supply rooms into a freezer where we store our meats. Another one holds dry goods and household necessities, while the third serves as a place to store linens and Father's bales of hay.
The cells are another matter. In the old days Don Henri used them to punish his enemies and to hold humans for his future meals.
I prefer to keep the cell doors open. Shut, their iron bars remind me of the terror and suffering that lay behind them. One of the cells serves as my laundry now, another as a tool shop. Five of the other six still function as holding cells for those times that Father or I have found it convenient to keep one or more of our captives alive.
My nose wrinkles at the thought of the winos and beggars that, whenever no other choices present themselves, I occasionally must seize and bring home. "Those are the ones who'll never be missed," Father always insists. But he is never the one who has to cage, feed and clean them until the alcohol and drugs leave their wretched bodies and the regimen of good, healthy meals finally make them fit to eat.
Of course no alcohol or drug recovery program can boast of the cure rate my hospitality generates. I chuckle at the thought. A hundred percent of my guests have given up their addictions and not one of them has ever had the opportunity to backslide.
I pass the sixth and smallest cell. While it appears to be like the others, as Don Henri intended, in truth it's nothing but a passageway to a secret corridor and the secret chambers built under the house.
Beyond the cells I reach the third storeroom. There I load a wooden barrow with a pitchfork and four bales of hay as well as sheets and pillow cases for my bed. I also bring an empty burlap bag.
The woman returns to my thoughts and I alternately imagine a raven-haired Latin woman or a cocoa-brown island beauty—each with piercing, emerald-green eyes. I wonder what she'll be like as I roll the barrow onto the platform, then step off and operate the winch that raises the hoist to the second floor.
Father has barely changed position since I left. The sight of Maria's bones lying on the hay near him remind me of the night before and I feel a small twinge of regret. I try not to think about her as I gather up the bones and place them in the burlap bag.
I roll the barrow into the room and unload the hay in a different corner of the room, and use the pitchfork to spread it out and fluff it up. Then I turn my attention to the old creature still lost in sleep on the other side of the room. "Father, " I mindspeak, "I've made you a new bed. Come, get up for a minute so I can clean out your old one."
Father snores, says nothing, moves not a muscle. Since I've no intention of carrying him, I shake him until he finally flutters his eyelids and manages a solitary thought. "Peter, why must you torment me so?"
But he lets me help him up and guide him to his new bed before he returns to his dreams once more.
I make no effort to be quiet as I use the fork to scoop up all the old bloodstained hay and load it and the burlap bag onto the wooden barrow. The barrow squeaks as I roll it out of Father's chamber and onto the platform. I grin at the noise. A caravan of gypsies could celebrate a wedding in this room without disturbing Father's rest.
Once the platform has been hoisted to the third floor, I roll the barrow close to the great hearth and shovel forkfuls of hay over the glowing embers. Fire flares up and consumes the hay almost as quickly as I heave it forward. The brief eruption of heat feels good against my bare skin and I realize the day has turned cool.
I look out the window at the darkening sky and frown. Whitecaps run southward, chased by the angry chill of a north wind. Trees bend before its force. Their leaves may point south to where my love must live, I think, but the north wind that moves them brings me nothing.
It's the kiss of the south wind I yearn for as I turn my back on the window, busy myself returning the barrow, the pitchfork, the burlap bag and the platform to the bottom floor—thinking, how strange that my future, the discovery of my lo
ve, could be so dependent on the vagaries of something as simple as the wind.
I watch the Twelve O'Clock News to see if there's any mention of Maria's disappearance. I need to know if anyone saw her leave with me, if there's any alert for the boat. I don't expect there will be any, but still, when the newscast ends without any mention of her, I feel my muscles relax. All contacts, such as the evening I had with Maria, involve some risk. Father has said it many times, we are safest when we are invisible. Safe or not, I decide to rid myself of the boat tonight, at the same time as I dispose of Maria's bones.
I wash the floor clean of all traces of blood, put fresh linens on the bed and then I treat myself to a long hot shower. Afterward I lie down, clean and warm under my covers, and allow myself to nap.
The wind howls through my windows and cold rain slashes the island when I awake. I jump from my bed and rush to slam the room's windows and doors shut. "Damn," I mutter, thinking of the open windows on the third floor and in Father's chamber.
I pull on a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt and a pair of sneakers, then run up the staircase to the third floor, shake my head at the cold remnants of the fire in the hearth, the dampness sprayed by the wind throughout the room.
"Peter!" Father calls me as I pull the last window shut. "Come close my windows, the rain's coming in."
"Father, you can close them yourself," I say as I look around the room, and make sure everything's secure. Outside, rain drums on the windowpanes.
"Peter, you opened the windows. You damn well can close them."
I grin at Father's intransigence, walk slowly down the stairs to his room.
"About time," he says when I enter. He coughs and wheezes for my benefit, watches as I rush around the room slamming doors, shutting windows. "Start afire too," he instructs. "Take the chill out of the air."
I stack logs in the fireplace on the exterior wall, grab a few handfuls of hay from Father's bedding to serve as kindling. The fire will soon make the room intolerably hot, but I know Father won't care. Age has made him sensitive to cold and far too fond of heat. I strike a match and watch the hay catch fire, the flames blossom and lick around the logs.
Dragon DelaSangre Page 4
