Dark Shadows 2: The Salem Branch

by Lara Parker

  Barnabas walked into the clearing, keenly aware that he was interrupting the gathering. He saw Antoinette sitting on the other side of the fire with her guitar, her face glowing with a wild light. She smiled and waved in recognition. The speaker paused, turned on his hip, and looked up, his eyes pinpoints of flame.

  “Hello, Barnabas,” he said, “come join us.” Barnabas was surprised to hear his name spoken until he recognized the carpenter, Jason Shaw, whom he had first seen at the Old House. But this charismatic individual was quite different from the man he remembered. His hair, no longer pulled into a ponytail, hung in a glossy curve on either side of his face, in the style of a medieval knight, shadowing his hollow cheekbones and hooding his glittering eyes. He rose and, obviously affected by some drug, swayed a little, his long hair swinging at his shoulders, and gripped Barnabas by one arm, pulled him towards the fire, and motioned him to sit.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to intrude,” Barnabas began, but Jason placed a finger over his lips and whispered, “We are all friends here. What’s ours is yours, and you are welcome.”

  Then Antoinette came forward and took his hand, led him to her sleeping bag spread over a log, and pulled him down beside her. She eased her body close and whispered, “Jason is channeling Jesus. That’s so cool, don’t you think?” and she giggled softly.

  Barnabas looked into her eyes and saw his own reflection, so huge were her pupils. “Here,” she said, looking down at something in her hand, “there’s one left.” She touched her finger to her tongue and lifted up and kissed him softly. His head spun when he felt her lips. Her kiss left a bitter taste in his mouth, and he heard the wind moan in the trees. There was far-off thunder.

  Barnabas watched Jason settle back on his pallet. In the firelight, his chiseled features were alabaster, his hair ebony. His crooked teeth were hidden beneath full, reddened lips, his voice a drawling monotone.

  “You got to drop all the programs you got from society, all that garbage on TV. You know: you got to eat this, wear this, drive this, buy, buy, buy, and create all that poison that pollutes the land. We’re not gonna listen to their lies. The boys in uniform, taught to hate gooks, taught to kill, their minds filled up with lies. We’re gonna fill our minds with love, young love. Let the love come down like rain. This here’s an enchanted place. We got the pure water, we got the little animals runnin’ wild. You can hear the sound of the wind—”

  One of the young men slapped a mosquito, and the slap was like a cap exploding.

  “No, no, man,” said Jason. “Please. Don’t kill. Not a single living thing, not even a bug, man. Shit, they live here, too. It’s their forest. We’re the intruders. We’re the strangers. So we got to blend in. We got to blend into the love.”

  Even as he spoke, a mosquito circled and landed on his arm. He waved it off, but it returned and hovered near his cheek. Gently, he fanned it away. The flower children were mesmerized. Everyone watched the mosquito as if it were an enchanted spirit. Finally it landed on the back of Jason’s hand, and he pursed his lips and blew it off. He smiled all around, “See. It’s so easy,” he said. But the mosquito returned, floated in the air, and again it landed on his hand. This time he let it remain. Barnabas watched, as intrigued as the others, as the insect inserted its proboscis into Jason’s flesh and began to drink.

  “Where’s the fear?” said Jason, “where’s the pain? Feelings, that’s all they are, feelings that remind you you’re alive.”

  Cramped and off-balance, Barnabas shifted on the log. “I’m sorry to interrupt your . . . congregation,” he said. “But I’ve come here to tell all of you something important.” There was grit in his mouth and the air felt thick.

  Jason turned to look at him, the sliver of a frown etched between his eyebrows. Vague expressions of interest flickered across the faces of some in the group. Others seemed lost in a daze, drifting in their own fantasies.

  Barnabas continued. “You must listen to me. I’ve come to warn you.” The fire flashed as a log collapsed, and the wind blew the smoke in his direction. His eyes were stinging. “You should all pack up and leave as soon as possible,” he said.

  Jason shook his head and leaned over. He threw a stick on the fire. “This is our home,” he said.

  “But it’s dangerous for you to stay.”

  “Why? You plan to set the pigs on us?”

  “No,” said Barnabas, startled by the insinuation. “It’s nothing like that. The police have nothing to do with this.”

  “Then it’s the Collins clan, wanting their land back, right? It’s Toni’s land, bro’. Right, hon?”

  Toni gave a little shrug and smiled at Barnabas, watching for his reaction. The wind moaned again, and he thought he felt raindrops.

  “And we made this.” Jason swept his arm in a wide arc towards the fire ring, the tents and hammocks, the mirrors. “We put that flash in the trees.” One of the boys laughed and mimicked the gesture, lifting his arm in the air. Then others did the same, until the whole band of hippies was making sweeping circles in the firelight, as if they were dancers in some ragged corps de ballet.

  “If you must know,” said Barnabas, weighing his words carefully, “I’m afraid there’s a killer on the loose.”

  There was moment of silence.

  Then Jason leapt up. “You bet your ass there is,” he said, teetering. “More than one. The body killers and soul killers of the marketplace, the greedy ones that feed on the masses, eating them alive. Profit. That’s all they live for. All the young love, all the young boys, programmed to be marines, to hate gooks and kill them with M-16s, like so many John Waynes. They make it look heroic, an All-American dude, a hero, dig? Just killin’ and killin’. But the man on the cross, he just loved. He just submitted to the love. That’s all his body carried was the love.”

  “Not just an ordinary killer. A monster, somewhere in these woods,” Barnabas said. He felt Toni’s grip on his arm tighten and he looked down at her. Her eyes were luminous.

  Jason began to pace like a restless panther in a cage. “We know this monster,” he said in a hoarse whisper.

  Barnabas wondered if it could be true. “You’ve seen him?”

  “He walks among us. He waits for us in the dark while we sleep.”

  “You’re not afraid?”

  “You got to look past the fear. You see, if I ever had a philosophy, it’s don’t think. The minute you think, you’re divided in your mind. You start to look inside and it scares you what you see.” He lifted his hand and stared at his wrist, turning it over and back. “You see the blood flowing in your veins. You hear your heart beat.”

  The guitar strummed a stronger rhythm and Barnabas could see the musician sitting just outside the circle of light, the girl with the flute resting against his knee. Jason came over to where Toni sat beside Barnabas and leaned into her. He cupped a hand under her neck and drew her mouth to his. His tongue slithered over her lips and prodded between her teeth. Barnabas looked away.

  “What are you afraid of?” said Jason. “She’s a woman. She’s scared someone’s gonna see her game. She hides behind her beauty. You know what I think, man? I think you’re afraid of your own secret. But that’s okay. Your fear is what helps you see who you are.” Jason began to twirl slowly. Rain was falling now in light drops.

  “Stoke the fire! Come on, man, stoke the fire.” He pointed to a pile of sticks beside Barnabas, where an ax lay against some chopped logs. Barnabas rose, at first confused, and then realized he was meant to put some wood on the flames. But before he could reach for a piece of kindling, Jason grew impatient, lunged towards him, and pushed him aside. Then, with dexterous grace, he scooped up several logs and placed them with care, nudging each into a void where it would catch and flare. Even under the influence of the drug, his movements were fluid, his slender legs and arms like those of a gymnast.

  The fire flashed and roared, and Barnabas could feel the heat rising within him, and frustration as well. A creature from another r
ealm walked in the dark forest, perhaps as close as the ring of trees. Another was hunting now, flying under the moonlit clouds. And a third lay in waiting in his own body. He stood, his hands hanging at his sides.

  Jason moved easily to the music, his sinuous movements aping the flute’s high vibrato. He came close to Barnabas, swaying as he glared at him.

  “The monster is in us all,” he said. “Don’t you think I see it in you?”

  Barnabas was stunned to silence. In a low voice, more to himself than to anyone, he said, “Do you not fear the Undead?”

  But Jason heard the words. “The Undead?” he said. “We are the undead. Aren’t we, children? Because we will live forever. The young love will never die.”

  Delighted by the phrase, “We are the undead,” flung across the timbre of the guitar, several of the campers rose to their feet. Charmed by the sound, as though poetry clung to the words, as if some lyric to a song performed by a rock band from hell captured their fancies, first one, then another, reached for a partner, laughed, staggered, all eager to dance. Bodies stooped and twirled, then nestled together, hips meshed, as sprays from the fire whirled in the air. It was a bonfire now, battling the raindrops coming down in a fine mist. The guitar player coaxed a hard rhythm from his instrument, and the flute whined a high, thin melody, as soft rain began to fall.

  “We are the non-dead, we are the undead, and we shall never die,” cried a girl and, reaching for a spent ember, brandished it aloft like a baton. When she saw the black on her hands, she laughed and smeared her face with the charcoal. The other dancers followed her lead and, delighted by her sooty mask, transformed themselves into cavorting minstrels, wide eyes peering from faces streaked with pitch. Some ran into the forest and returned with armloads of leaves which they tossed into the air, and the leaves fell like ashes, clung to damp bodies and tangled hair. Where once there had been flower children, now garish apparitions appeared, and they cried again and again, “We are the Undead. We shall never die.”

  Barnabas knew he was witnessing a celebration as old as Dionysus, as innocent as child’s play, and he was helpless to stop them, even though his body ached with anxiety. One girl drew off her blouse, and another pulled a camisole over her head. Boys, already shirtless, tugged wet bodies into squirming embraces. He could see only odd pieces of clothing on dancing shapes: a ruffled skirt, a pair of fringed chaps, a soft, shimmering veil. A girl held her arms high above her head and twirled like a gypsy, her dark hair falling down her back, her rounded breasts an adornment beneath her beads, her crimson nipples like jewels. Feeling lightheaded, he sat back on a log and watched her. Beauty. All was beauty. There was nothing more than this.

  He envied the couples, their flying hair, their burnished skin. Moving in shadow play around the fire, shifting between curtains of raindrops, the bodies intertwined and fell apart, were indistinguishable from one another, and he could see only jeans that shaped a thigh, a garland of flowers, a spangled scarf, an ankle bracelet jingling on a slender foot.

  “Life is music. Life is love,” someone cried out, and a chorus repeated the refrain to the throbbing guitar, “Life is love. Life is light. We are the Undead.” And someone giggled hysterically. Barnabas was caught between Puritan and voyeur, his own debased existence somehow absolved by the scene. What’s more, his warnings had fallen on deaf ears.

  Toni stood before him. She was still clothed, and her silhouette blotted the light from the fire. She leaned in and took his hands. “Come and dance,” she said, and tugged on his fingers, laughing as he shrank back in embarrassment. Shadows of the fire played across the clearing, and Barnabas thought he should leave but he could not make himself. The smoke stung his eyes; he squeezed them shut to ease the pain, and to his surprise, he felt hot tears. When he opened them again, Jason was standing beside Toni, his pupils glowing as he stared down at her. Obviously, he had some claim on her. Still seated on the log, Barnabas watched Jason lift a hand and touch her cheek. She swayed slightly and seemed riveted, gazing into Jason’s eyes for a long moment while the fire glowed between them. Then there was a bright streak of lightning and a far-off rumble. The rain fell gently now, tap-tapping on the leaves still clinging to the trees, as if an invisible hand knocked on the forest door. Then another clap of thunder sent the campers scampering as they frantically unzipped flies and scrambled inside their canvas caves, and Jason, too, was gone. Antoinette turned to Barnabas, took his hand and said, “Come on.” Somehow he got to his feet and followed her to her tent.

  His first thought was that she was offering him a place out of the rain, but she reached for him and pulled him down beside her. He could not see her smile but he could feel its warmth in the closed space, and he breathed in her scent, vanilla and fern, mingled with the musk of her perspiration. He tasted the damp of her cheek against his mouth and, when she turned her lips to his, she was more liquid than flesh as she moved with amazing tenderness, nestled her body within the curve of his, and tugged his arms so that, haltingly, they embraced her. She did all this with such skill that he had a fleeting thought of harlots he had known and fed on in another life. She was all sweetness and, although he knew her eagerness was brought on by the drugs, he could not help but be aroused. It was natural to gather her to him when he felt her arms encircle his neck and her body spring against his. Confusion rioted in his brain. He forced himself to pull away but she shivered and pressed closer. Confusion, he thought, is the common state of man. How dimly he remembered the clear, cold reason of his vampire life. In his languorous state he was too weak to resist. She was deft, skilled, as free as water flowing in a stream. And then, amazingly, he wanted her. His hands swam over her urging her on. He could smell the balsam in her hair and the odor of the aging canvas above their heads as the rain drummed down on the tent. The sound was melodic, oddly soothing and mesmerizing. It was Angelique lying in his arms, her glow palpable and radiating like the heat from a stone left in the sun. Gently, she touched his cheek, his neck, his lips; then she curled to him, and he was struck with a sudden longing.

  Not since those times when he had been forced by circumstances to go without blood for days could he recall a hunger such as this; and the anticipation of release after the ache of denial, when his breath was hot above the jugular just before he gave way and sank his fangs, rang in his body like a gong. As he gathered her to him, those same pangs of guilt made him hesitate. Angelique was his nemesis, and intimacy with her could only lead to disaster. He must desist. But reluctance flared like an ember, then dimmed, until it was a faint pinpoint of light, and in its place came a flood of emotion that could only be called gratitude. He fell from a great height into her arms.

  HE NEVER KNEW when she removed her clothes, but when he finally held her against him, she was warmer than he had thought possible, supple and merging, and he pressed the thin film of her skin with his fingers, his tongue, his kisses, his teeth. He looked up to see her dark form, her hair wild in the faint light, her parted lips, her rapturous expression, and in that moment, he knew she loved him still. She let go his mouth, gasping, and whimpered as he buried his face in her neck. She moaned when she felt his breath, and then his teeth, her fingertips prodding the back of his shoulders, and she arched, presenting a fluttering pulse to his hunger. He was tempted, but it was all of her he wanted; and breathing with her was like coming back to life, as the rain pounded on the roof.

  WHEN HE RETURNED to his senses, he was lying near the opening of the tent, watching the faint light of dawn appear in the sky. Exhausted, but suffused with warmth, he lay staring at, but not seeing, a couple entwined on the ground. Antoinette roused to whisper, “Close the flap or the rain will come in.”

  He sat up to reach for the zipper and looked out. The rain still fell in bursts, and a bolt of lightning exposed the two near the blackened fire ring. The boy had the girl pinned beneath him, his hands pressed against her shoulders, her legs squeezed between his knees. His lovemaking seemed more brutal than necessary, and the girl tos
sed her head back and forth as though in pain. Barnabas felt Toni reach for him, but he could not look away from the couple. The boy’s dark head and shoulders rose and fell as the girl struggled to pull free, and his movements were less those of a lover and more those of a beast who was rhythmically licking and feeding. Barnabas leaned out of the tent. Another bolt of lightning brightened the gloom. It was then he saw the torn overalls, the faded plaid beneath a coating of mud and leaves, and, to his horror, the heavy work boots. The girl’s eyes, which moments earlier had appeared glazed with lust, were vacant. Blood oozed at her throat, and her limp body shuddered and collapsed as the dark creature raised his head, and then his shoulders, then lowered himself again to feed.

  Jerking on his clothes, Barnabas jostled Toni and almost stepped on her when he ducked out of the tent, and she uttered a cry like a struck child. He could barely stand, and he was afraid he was going to be sick. Uncertain of what he should do, his heart beating wildly, his brain blurred, he looked around in helpless bewilderment. He could barely make out the pair on the ground, but he staggered towards where they lay. When lightning flared again, he saw the glinting blade of the ax by the woodpile. In desperation, he jerked it up. The wooden handle was wrapped with tape and the tool weighty in his hand. The odor of blood came to him now, and for the first time in centuries the smell repulsed him. His fingers closed on the grip and he took another clumsy step. Oblivious, the creature rose up, then fell against the girl with one more thrust of its head.