Lasher

by Anne Rice

  In Hamlen town, long long ago

  Nobody was happy, no, no, no

  Their pretty little town was full of rats!

  In everything they ate big holes

  And drank their soup from the big soup bowls

  And even made their nests in people's hats!

  For a long time she sat beside him on the floor, watching him as he lay there with his eyes open. What a pure marvel he seemed, his hair black and flowing, facial hair thickening and the hands still like baby hands except they were bigger than her own hands, and his thumbs though well-developed were slightly longer than normal thumbs. She felt dizzy. She was confused. She had to eat.

  He ordered food for her, and watched her eat. He told her she must eat regularly from now on and then he knelt down before her chair, between her legs, and tore open the silk of her blouse and squeezed her breast so the milk came as out of a fountain into his mouth.

  At other medical establishments, she managed to breach the X-ray department, and twice to run a complete brain scan on him, ordering everyone else out of the laboratory. But there were machines she couldn't use and those she didn't know how to. Then she became bolder. She gave orders to people, and they helped her. She was masquerading as herself: "Dr. Rowan Mayfair, neurosurgeon." Among strangers she took over as though she were a visiting specialist and her needs took priority.

  She picked up charts and pencils and phones when she needed them. She was single-minded. Record, test, discover. She studied the X rays of his skull, his hands.

  She measured his head, and felt that soft skin again in the very middle of his skull--the fontanel--bigger than that of an infant. Lord God, she could put her fist through that skin, couldn't she?

  Sometime in those first few days, he began to have some consistent success with his writing. Especially if he used a fine-pointed pen that nevertheless glided easily. He made a family tree of all the Mayfairs. He scribbled and scribbled. He included in it all sorts of Mayfairs whom she did not know, tracing lines from Jeanne Louise and Pierre of which she'd been unaware, and over and over again, he asked her to tell him what she had read in the Talamasca files. At eight in the morning, his handwriting had been round and childish and slow. By night, it was long, slanted, and at such a speed that she could not actually follow the formation of a letter with her eyes. He also began the strange singing--the humming, the insectile sound.

  He wanted her to sing again and again. She sang lots of songs to him, until she was too sleepy to think.

  Along came a fellow slim and tall,

  And said to the man at city hall,

  My dear, I think I have a cure.

  I'll rid your town of every rat

  But you have to pay me well for that,

  And the mayor jumped up and down and cried,

  Why sure.

  But more and more, he seemed baffled. He did not remember the rhymes she'd sung to him only days ago. No, no, say it again:

  The man in the wilderness asked of me,

  How many strawberries grew in the sea?

  I answered him, as I thought good,

  As many as red herrings grew in the wood.

  She herself was becoming increasingly exhausted. She'd lost weight. The mere sight of herself in a lobby mirror alarmed her.

  "I have to find a quiet place, a laboratory, a place where we can work," she said. "God help me. I'm tired, I'm seeing things." In moments of pure fatigue, a dread gripped her. Where was she? What was going to happen to her? He dominated her waking thoughts, and then she sank back into herself and thought, I am lost, I am like a person on a drug trip, an obsession. But she had to study him, see what he was, and in the midst of her worst doubts she realized she was passionately possessive of him, protective, and drawn to him.

  What would they do to him if they got hold of him? He had already committed crimes. He had stolen, perhaps he had killed for the passports. She didn't know. She couldn't think straight. Just a quiet place, a laboratory, what if they could go secretly back to San Francisco. If she could get in touch with Mitch Flanagan. But you couldn't simply call the Keplinger Institute.

  Their lovemaking had tapered off somewhat. He still drank the milk from her breasts, though less and less often. He discovered the churches of Paris. He became perplexed, hostile, deeply agitated in these churches. He walked up to the stained-glass windows and reached up for them. He stared with hatred and loathing at the statues of the saints, at the tabernacle.

  He said it was not the right cathedral.

  "Well, if you mean the cathedral in Donnelaith, of course not. We're in Paris."

  He turned on her and in a sharp whisper told her, "They burnt it." He wanted to hear a Catholic Mass. He dragged her out of bed before dawn and down to the Church of the Madeleine so that he would witness this ceremony.

  It was cold in Paris. She could not complete a thought without his interrupting her. It seemed at times she lost all track of day and night; he'd wake her up, suckling or making love, roughly, yet thrillingly, and then she'd doze again, and he'd wake her to give her food, talking on and on about something he'd seen on the television, on the news, or some other item or thing that he had noticed. It was random and more and more fragmented.

  He picked up the hotel menu off the table and sang all the names of the dishes. Then he went back to writing furiously.

  "And then Julien brought Evelyn to his house and there conceived Laura Lee, who gave birth to Alicia and Gifford. And from Julien also the illegitimate child, Michael O'Brien, born to the girl in St. Margaret's orphanage, who gave it up and went into the convent to become Sister Bridget Marie, and then from that girl, three boys and one girl, and that girl married Alaister Curry, who gave birth to Tim Curry, who..."

  "Wait a minute, what are you writing?"

  "Leave me alone." Suddenly he stared at it. He tore the paper in little pieces. "Where are your notebooks, what have you written in them?" he demanded.

  They were never too far from the room. She was too weak, too tired. And her breasts no sooner filled with milk than it began to spill under her blouse and he came to drink it. He cradled her in his arms. The swooning pleasure of his nursing from her was so great that nothing else mattered when it happened. All fear left her.

  That was his trump card, she figured, the comfort, the pleasure, the high-pitched glamour and joy of just being with him, listening to his rapid, often incoherent speech, watching him react to things.

  But what was he? She had lived with the illusion from the very first hour that somehow she had created him, that through her powerful telekinesis she had mutated her own child into him. Now she was beginning to see impossible contradictions. First off, she could remember no distinct scheme of elements being in her mind during that time when he was struggling on the floor to remain alive, the birth fluid all over both of them. She had given some sort of powerful psychic nourishment. She had even given colostrum, she remembered that now, the first spill from her breasts, and there had been a great deal of it.

  But this thing, this creature, was highly organized--no Frankenstein's monster, made of parts, no grotesque culmination of witchcraft. He knew his own properties too--that he could run very fast, that he caught scents she did not, that he gave off a scent which others caught without knowing it. That was true. Only now and then did the scent intrude on her, and when it did, she had the eerie feeling it had been engulfing her all along and even controlling her, rather like a pheromone.

  More and more she kept her journal in narrative form, so that if something happened to her, if someone found it, that person could understand it.

  "We've stayed long enough in Paris," she said. "They might come to find us." Two bank wires had come in. They had a fortune at their disposal and it took her all afternoon, with him at her side, to assign the money to various accounts so they could hide it. She wanted to leave, perhaps only to be warmer.

  "Come now, darling dear, we have only been in ten different hotels. Stop worrying, stop checking
the locks, you know what it is, it's the serotonin in your brain, it's a fear-flight mechanism gone wrong. You're obsessive-compulsive, you always have been."

  "How do you know that?"

  "I told you...I..." and then he stopped. He was beginning to be a little less confident, maybe "...I knew all that because once you knew. When I was spirit I knew what my witches knew. It was I...?"

  "What's the matter with you, what are you thinking?"

  In the night he stood at the window and looked out at the light of Paris. He made love to her over and over, whether she was asleep or awake. His mustache had come in thick and finally soft, and his beard was now covering his entire chin.

  But the soft spot in his skull was still there.

  Indeed, his entire schedule of growth rates seemed programmed and different. She began to make comparisons to other species, listing his various characteristics. For example he possessed the strength of a lower primate in his arms, yet an enhanced ability with his fingers and thumbs. She would like to see what happened if he got access to a piano. His need for air was his great vulnerability. It was conceivable that he could be smothered. But he was so strong. So very strong. What would happen to him in water?

  They left Paris for Berlin. He did not like the sound of the German language; it was not ugly to him, but "pointed," he said, he couldn't shut out the sharp intrusive sounds. He wanted to get out of Germany.

  That week she miscarried. Cramps like seizures, and blood all over the bathroom before she'd realized what was happening. He stared at the blood in utter puzzlement.

  "I have to rest," she said again. If only she could rest, some quiet place, where there was no singing and no poems and nothing, just peace. But she scraped up the tiny gelatinous mass at the core of her hemorrhage. An embryo at that stage of pregnancy would have been microscopic. There was something here, and it had limbs! It repulsed her and fascinated her. She insisted that they go to a laboratory where she could study it further.

  She managed three hours there before people began to question them. She had made copious notes.

  "There are two kinds of mutation," she told him, "those which can be passed on and those which cannot. This is not a singular occurrence, your birth, it's conceivable that you are...a species. But how could this be? How could this happen? How could one combination of telekinesis..." She broke off, resorting again to scientific terms. From the clinic she had stolen blood equipment and now she drew some of her own and properly sealed the vials.

  He smiled at her in a grim way. "You don't really love me," he said coldly.

  "Of course I do."

  "Can you love the truth more than mystery?"

  "What is the truth?" She approached him, put her hands on his face and looked into his eyes. "What do you remember way back, from the very beginning, from the time before humans came on the earth? You remember you talked of such things, of the world of the spirits and how the spirits had learned from humans. You spoke..."

  "I don't remember anything," he said blankly.

  He sat at the table reading over what he had written. He stretched out his long legs, crossed his ankles, cradled his head on his wrists against the back of the chair and listened to his own tape recordings. His hair now reached his shoulders. He asked her questions as if testing her, "Who was Mary Beth? Who was her mother?"

  Over and over she recounted the family history as she knew it. She repeated the stories from the Talamasca files and random things she had heard from the others. She described--at his request--all the living Mayfairs she knew. He had begun to be quiet, listening to her, forcing her to speak, for hours.

  This was agony.

  "I am by nature quiet," she said. "I cannot...I cannot..."

  "Who were Julien's brothers, name them and their children."

  At last, so exhausted she couldn't move, the cramps coming again as if she had been impregnated again and was in fact already aborting, she said, "I can do this no longer."

  "Donnelaith," he said. "I want to go there."

  He'd been standing by the window, crying. "You do love me, don't you? You aren't afraid of me?"

  She thought a long time before she said, "Yes, I do love you. You are all alone...and I love you. I do. But I'm frightened. This is frenzy. This is not organization and work. This is mania. I am afraid...of you."

  When he bent over her, she clasped his head in her hands and guided it to her nipple; then came the trance as he sucked up the milk. Would he never tire of it? Would he nurse forever? The thought made her laugh and laugh. He would be an infant forever--an infant who walks and talks and makes love.

  "Yes, and sings, don't forget that!" he said when she told him.

  He finally began to watch television in long unbroken periods. She could use the bathroom without his hovering about. She could bathe slowly. She did not bleed anymore. Oh, for the Keplinger Institute, she thought. Think of the things the Mayfair money could do, if only she dared. Surely they were looking for her, looking for them both.

  She had gone about this all wrong! She should have hidden him in New Orleans and pretended that he had never been there! Blundering, mad, but she hadn't been able to think on that day, that awful Christmas morning! God, an eternity had come and gone since then!

  He was glaring at her. He looked vicious and afraid.

  "What's the matter with you?" he said.

  "Tell their names," she said.

  "No, you tell me..."

  He picked up one of the pages he'd so carefully written out, in narrow cluttered scrawl, and then he laid it down. "How long have we been here?"

  "Don't you know?"

  He wept for a while. She slept, and when she awoke, he was composed and dressed. The bags were packed. He told her they were going to England.

  They drove north from London to Donnelaith. She drove most of the time, but then he learned, and was able on the lonely stretches of country road to manage the vehicle acceptably. They had all their possessions in the car. She felt safer here than in Paris.

  "But why? Won't they look for us here?" he asked.

  "I don't know. I don't know that they expect us to go to Scotland. I don't know that they expect you to remember things..."

  He laughed bitterly. "Well, sometimes I don't."

  "What do you remember now?"

  He looked hateful and solemn. His beard and the mustache were ominous on his face. Signs of obvious sexual maturity. The miscarriage. The fontanel. This was the mature animal, or was it merely adolescent?

  Donnelaith.

  It wasn't a town at all. It was no more than the inn, and the nearby headquarters of the archaeological project, where a small contingent of archaeological students slept and ate. Tours were offered of the ruined castle above the loch, and of the ruined town down in the glen, with its Cathedral--which could not be seen from the inn--and farther out the ancient primal circle of stones, which was quite a walk but worth it. But you could go only in the designated areas. If you roamed alone, you must obey all signs. The tours would be tomorrow in the morning.

  It chilled her to look down from the window of the inn and actually see it in the dim distorting distance, the place where it had all begun, where Suzanne, the cunning woman of the village, had called up a spirit named Lasher and that spirit had attached itself forever to Suzanne's female descendants. It chilled her. And the great awesome glen was gray and melancholy and softly beautiful, beautiful as damp and green and northern places can be, like the remote high counties of Northern California. The twilight was coming, thick and shining in the damp gloom, and the entire world below appeared mysterious, something of fairy tales.

  It was possible to see any car approaching the town, from any direction. There was only one road, and you could see for miles north and south. And the majority of the tourists came from nearby cities and in busloads.

  Only a few die-hards stayed at the inn, a girl from America writing a paper on the lost cathedrals of Scotland. An old gentleman, researching his clan in thes
e remote parts, convinced that it led back to Robert the Bruce. A young couple in love who cared about no one.

  And Lasher and Rowan. At supper he tried some of the hard food. He hated it. He wanted to nurse. He stared at her hungrily.

  They had the best and most spacious room, very prim and proper with a ruffled bed beneath the low white-painted beams, a thick carpet and a little fire to take away the chill, and a sweeping view of the glen below them. He told the innkeeper they must not have a phone in the room, they must have privacy, and what meals he wanted prepared for them and when, and then he took her wrist in his terrible, painful grip and said, "We are going out into the valley."

  He pulled her down the stairs into the front room of the inn. The couple sat glowering at them from a small distant table.

  "It's dark," she said. She was tired from the drive and faintly sick again. "Why don't we wait until morning?"

  "No," he said. "Put on your walking shoes." He turned and bent down and started to pull off her shoes. People were staring at him. It occurred to her that it wasn't at all unusual for him to behave like this. It was typical. He had a madman's judgment; a madman's naivete.

  "I'll do it," she said. They went back upstairs. He watched as she dressed for the cold outdoors. She came out fit for a long night of exploration, walking shoes laced over wool socks.

  It seemed they walked an endless time down the slope and then along the banks of the loch.

  The half-moon illuminated the jagged and broken walls of the castle.

  The cliffs were perilous, but there were well-worn paths. He climbed the path, pulling her along with him. The archaeologists had set up barriers, signs, warnings, but there was no one around. They went where they chose to go. New wooden staircases had been built in the high half-ruined towers, and down into dungeons. He crept ahead of her, very surefooted, and almost frenzied.

  It occurred to her that this might be the best time for escape. That if she only had the nerve she could push him off the top of one of these fragile staircases, and down he would go and splat, he'd have to suffer like any human! His bones weren't brittle, they were mostly cartilage still, but he would die, surely he would. Even as she considered it, she began to cry. She felt she could not do it. She could not dispatch him like that. Kill him? She couldn't do it.