Dracula's Children

by Richard Lortz

  “Oh, but you don’t know Maria. You wouldn’t get her to do anything.”

  “Sweetie—when it comes t’ that, I could get Jesus and Mary t’ put on a show. A few drinks and some grass and maybe an Up—look, it comes natural. And if it’s kids, we know how to sweet-talk ’em after a couple a pills. I got this one kid, Lenny, nice Italian boy—as big-dicked as Superman wearin’ two cock rings but only thirteen: so shy I couldn’t get him to lift up his eyes; two pills later and after a good feel of that bread, he gets this hardon like the torch on the Statue of Liberty. . . . ”

  Two hours later, the moon is midsky and through shreds of drifting smoke-thin clouds, the light filters down between the blackened buildings. When it is at its brightest, flooding through Maria’s window, it throws a dark Crosshatch of bars against the floor as it’ would on the floor of a prison.

  The room is a prison; for whom would you say?—not the simple psychopath who would steal your purse, ransack your home, but for that most feared and dangerous of all human deviates: the criminally insane—that small naked child with the heart-shaped, bloodless face and golden eyes who scratches and bangs and throws herself against the door, who leaps with astonishing strength, unbelievable agility a full ten feet into the air to claw and cling with hands, mouth, curled feet and toes, all of her body to the bars of the window that keep her from the night, only, after hopeless moments, to slide helplessly back and down to the floor with whines and whimpers, yelps and howling cries.

  Bruised, softly snarling, with senseless, mindless gestures, she picks and scratches at herself until some of the skin is raw and bleeding; then, crushed into a corner, she licks herself, mixing tears with blood and mucus, her head jerking this way and that, waiting, waiting, ready to spring, because there is a sound in the hall: the soft rush of footsteps, whispers, a touch of the handle, the lock on the door turning.

  It was Lydia who first heard the sounds from Maria’s bedroom and was so startled and hair-risen she tried to pull away from the hammer of Rafi’s body. And he was so close to climax he muttered an oath, ready to hit her.

  But—“Hush! Hush!”—hissing it, covering his mouth.

  His flared boned hardness ready to burst within her began instantly to soften, for he heard the noises too: the eeriest, most frightening sounds he was ever to hear for the rest of his life.

  “Somethin’s happened to your kid! Some-thin’s in there—with her!”

  No one is “with her” of course. Only Maria, so shadowed and crouched it is impossible quite to see where she is until she edges out into the moonlight.

  What is the divine task of the animal cornered: the wounded rat, the rabid dog, the frenzied wolf? Only to escape.

  Convulsed, her face a contorted mask, her mouth laced with foam, her teeth bared and snapping, she creeps forward toward her unknown tormentors who shake and tremble before her, shrinking back, tripping, stumbling, Lydia falling to her knees with babbling, choking cries of amazement and revulsion.

  Maria just has room to scramble by them. Once outside the room, she flings herself howling against the apartment door, with no sense at all of a lock to open or a doorknob to turn.

  It is the panicked Rafi who does it—seeing the unmistakable intention of the “thing” that is upon them.

  At the stairs, for one shocking moment, Maria turns her incredible face back, her eyes flashing fire.

  ANGEL

  OLBOBO SANTIAGO was Angel’s uncle, an ancient man, wrinkled and half bent to the ground, whose left leg was almost useless and had shrunken until it was two inches shorter than the right—an undiagnosed medical conundrum to the doctors at the Manhattan Hospital for Joint Diseases. Olbobo, however (the name is a contraction of Old Bobo), suspected what was wrong and would have been happy to tell you in crackling, toothless Spanish that he had one foot in the grave, literally: the leg was simply farther along in its dying than the rest of him. Whatever it was, he despaired of the fine glossy crutches the hospital supplied and was forever breaking off knobbly branches from trees in the park to comfort and aid him in his hobbling.

  He lived in a small hideous room at a welfare hotel, with no sense of cleanliness or order, and this, if he chose to stay, could have been Angel’s home.

  There was love between the two, but only to the extent that a deaf-and-dumb kid and a half-dead, wizened old man with few interests and little or no memory could maintain a reciprocity of feeling. Whenever Angel showed up—for a shower, to wash his few clothes, or, though seldom, to sleep—the old man was very happy to see him and welcomed him warmly, but it was a new happiness and welcome each time; in between, he forgot who Angel was, indeed, that he had a nephew, that Angel Rodriguez was alive or had ever lived at all.

  Because of this, Angel at a very early age—really as far back as he could remember, became a nighttime, daytime wanderer: a child of the streets; the streets he knew intimately, the streets were his home.

  It is after three in the morning, and along the curb of the virtually deserted street, Angel kicks a battered beer can.

  Since he has lived in a silent world after the age of eight when an infection destroyed both of his inner ears, his vision is particularly sensitive and keen; every fractured glint of the metal, every flash of color, every leap and jump and glide of the can is a dance he enjoys, until it disappears down the mouth of an open sewer.

  A tiny gray kitten attracts his attention, pawing through the heaped refuse of an overturned trash can. He squats down to touch the pretty creature, seeing its silent pink mouth open and close as it mews. As he strokes the bony head and thin neck he knows the cat is purring from the vibration he feels in its throat.

  He digs through the garbage, futilely at first, but then actually finds two cans that contain a bit of moist cat food. He digs it out and the kitten eats so greedily it barely has time to swallow before the next bite is gulped in, its tiny baby teeth scraping quickly and softly at his fingers. Then its curious rough tongue licking the tips.

  It is so pitiful and sweet that tears fill Angel’s eyes and run over, and for a long while after the cat has finished what little there was, he cuddles it to his heart, smiling because all it is possible to feel is a tiny, almost weightless ball of furry vibration.

  He wishes he could own it, keep it, give it love forever; surely he could bring it to his Uncle Olbobo, but the cat is only one of a hundred he encounters on his nighttime journeys, and it is rare that he lets one stop him at all, because he would not be able to live and keep breaking his heart a hundred times over.

  He walks on, always alert, turning his head frequently to look behind, having learned that his eyes must be his ears also.

  As he nears a corner, his walking becomes idle and supercasual, because from the corner of an eye he has glimpsed a tall dark figure standing in a shadowed doorway.

  It is a tease-game he plays frequently, for whatever pleasure from close danger it affords: to pretend not to see, not to notice, to fake innocence and vulnerability to attack while prepared, totally ready for instant flight.

  Anyone out at three in the morning is a hunter: for food, for money, for blood, for alcohol, for sex, for dope, sometimes with a raging, sleepless loneliness that simply wants to talk or, hardest to find of all, to touch lovingly or be touched, and as Angel draws closer so he can more clearly see and also present himself as easier bait for whatever the hunter might desire, his heart beats ever so slightly faster, and he hopes that whatever the danger-flight might be, it will be fun, relieving for a few moments the endless tedium and boredom of wandering forever through the silent voiceless night.

  What it turns out to be is only that Godawful fairy, the tall bony one with the shit-thick false eyelashes, probably just home from a “date,” the sequins still stuck all over his fuckin’ eyes.

  So—? With nothing better to do, let’s make the most of it. And for the first time ever, Angel looks up at him directly as he spits with enormous éclat and saunters by. He then pauses, letting an idle hand gl
ide over a full crotch in a slow, taunting gesture of ownership and pride before he hitches up his trousers, spits another vigorous, healthy spit, and walks on.

  Looking down at Angel and trembling before the enormity of the insult, Fenister wishes, prays, humbly begs God for a razor to hack and slash that hideous, fantastically beautiful boy to shreds and pieces. Better—something that lasts longer and is more enjoyable than a razor, and his mind races and fumes for a plan while he waits for Star-Glory to come down from the bathroom upstairs.

  Something has to be done; it is time; something beautiful.

  About a mile to the north and a few blocks east where the livable buildings thinned out and the rotting warehouses began, was an all-night bar called the HITCHING POST, only on the sign outside, some of the neon letters didn’t work, so it read ITCHI G OST, which amused Angel. In his mind he always called it “The Itchy Ghost.”

  And it was to the Itchy Ghost that he now wandered, as he often did; not to go in, of course, but to hide and watch from the street because besides ordinary people and a more than usual assortment of drunks and queers and whores, the place was visited by strange wild men dressed in clothes resembling cowboys, yet different: sometimes all in shiny leather, with fringes, and wide belts studded with steel crosses or stars. Some of them wore gold earrings and strange necklaces made of animal claws and maybe fish teeth, and dog collars glinting with bits of colored glass, and silver chains. A few of them were sometimes puzzling and hard to figure out because although big and heavily muscled and fearsomely tough and rough-spoken, their wavy golden hair was black at the roots, and more than once he had seen a mouth so red it had to be painted.

  They came singly, and in pairs, and in small groups, filtering in and out through the night, and sometimes, if Angel were lucky, he’d see a great wave of them zoom up on motorcycles in a billowing cloud of smoke and dust, some of them with wild, openmouthed girls clinging to their backs, dressed as weirdly as they.

  Thinking about these men and their girls, he had the feeling, the prickly sensation at the back of his head, that something interesting would happen tonight, but perhaps it was more desire than intuition and only because he was more than usually bored and pained by his unending wandering through the streets night after exhausting night. If only there were someplace to go, really go, someplace to be, something to be done, someone who wanted or needed him.

  Would the emptiness, the worthlessness of himself never end?—and he surrendered, as he sometimes did, because it helped just a little, to a deep-inside rush of self-pity that made him curl up into the smallest he could make himself at the shadowed side of a building where he choked out soundless sobs and, with relief, let the tears run down his face and drip from his chin.

  Then, with a gulp and a sigh, it was over and he was prepared to face the streets once more, surprised to find that he was only a block away from “The Itchy Ghost” where the broken, beat-up sign blinked pinkly in the night.

  Just before he reaches the bar, Angel passes an alley, stops, and then comes cautiously back, knowing that the corner of his eye has seen something move.

  The alley is wide, and deeply shadowed, but the surrounding buildings so arranged that a patch of moonlight, almost round like a spot on a stage, falls down, and smack in the center of the light stand two Blacks, a man with his trousers about his ankles, and a woman with her dress pulled up to the waist, trying, it seems in vain, to fuck.

  Now the reason that they can’t is obvious: they are almost falling-down drunk, and the man’s dick as limp as a wilted, month-old carrot.

  This is entertainment of a kind, and starved for it, Angel is not apt to abandon it too quickly. Indeed, he moves closer to improve his view and watches the two of them weave slightly, each supporting the other. The man jiggles his dick with one hand, trying to coax it to life, while the other raises a bottle to his lips, which is then passed to the woman who also sucks at the mouth of it, a trickle of amber fluid trailing to her jaw.

  There is a long drunken tableau as the two stare stupid and motionless into nothing. The woman is the first to realize they have an audience, and with thick-tongued interest—“We got company, love.”

  “Wha’?” He turns, sees Angel who with the moon behind him creating a silhouette outlined in whitened gold, might just possibly be an angel, drops his dick, fumbles in a pocket, taking out a switchblade that opens with a click into a long thin shaft of silvery steel. However ominous this might appear, he is so numb-fingered that the knife slips from his grasp, clattering to the pavement a few feet away.

  Another tableau, the couple incapable of movement that involves their legs and feet.

  The woman, presently—“I’s on’y a kid.” Seductive and friendly—“Com-mere, baby. You wanna drink?”—shaking the bottle above her head.

  Her companion is instantly piqued. “Hey—! Waddayah doin’?”

  A mucus-rattled laugh—“Two’s company, three’s a . . . three’s a . . . an or-gee.”

  More gurgling laughter, immediately cut to silence because Angel steps forward, bending to pick up the knife.

  “Yuh fuckin’ kid!” It is the man who speaks and this time Angel is close enough actually to read the words, and see the expression of regret that immediately follows them.

  The couple are so completely stoned they could be cut up and quartered on the spot: they are aware of this and that they’re at the complete mercy of the boy. Their eyes widen and glaze over as they silently watch Angel, who makes a slightly ridiculous display of handling the knife, implying that he is long used to doing so; glancing back and forth between the couple and the blade, allowing the full menacing potential of his advantage to sink in.

  He circles them slowly, as if deciding which or where to cut first. He can just make out the flaccid hang of the man’s long dick which now, under his steady gaze, grows smaller and smaller, pulling back into itself, the skin wrinkling and folding as the first and most horrendous fear in the world drenches the man’s face in sweat.

  He moans, “Oh God!” and seizes the woman, stumbling behind her in a frenzy, pushing her hips forward, one arm circling her throat so that her body is bent in an arc facing Angel, the sex of her gleaming pink and wetly open in the dark curves of rounded belly and thighs.

  “Pussy,” the man groans thinly; “tha’s good pussy; fuh you, kid; all yours; le’s fuck . . . le’s fuck, kid; com’on; le’s fuck . . . fuck . . . fuck. . . .”

  Surprisingly, “The Itchy Ghost” is virtually empty; two people at a table and only three at the bar, none of them in any way particularly unusual.

  Angel’s head drops below the windowsill. He goes behind the building where through an opaque window he can see into the men’s John through a cracked corner in the glass. Sometimes something interesting goes on here. Once he had seen a man getting beaten bloody with a chain; another time he had seen a wild gang-bang with like ten guys sucking each other off. No one’s here now. He coughs, almost laughing, because the stink of the place is so overpowering that even through the small window crack, it’s like sand in his throat.

  So! With “The Itchy Ghost” devoid of interest, what is there to do? He wanders on, passing the alley again where he had threatened and then abandoned the couple. They are both now lying on the ground, the woman passed out apparently, and the man just barely conscious. Glimpsing Angel as he meanders by, the man lifts his head, calling happily, without fear this time, “Le’s fuck, kid; le’s fuck. . . .”

  The area where the warehouses are is real spooky, the crumbling buildings high and sometimes mere shells or skeletons. They are dangerous too; to go into, that is, because often the floors have rotted away or there are gaping holes looking down into inky pools of water far below.

  But the “feeling” is stimulating, the atmosphere—like maybe a walk on the moon, or on a deserted planet where the people or the “things” that once lived there all died and only the ruins of their strange cities remain.

  Angel always got an eerie fe
eling just being there; sometimes, if he were lucky, the feeling got so strong and his imagination so active, a rash of gooseflesh would cover his body with prickly cold.

  I’m on the moon, he would believe, but I don’t need no space suit ’cause my body has been rigerously trained to breathe no air in a simalated space capsull at Cape Can-anna-uh-ruh-bull.

  Or, I’m on Jupiter, and all these falling down buildings are a city made outa solit gold ’cause gold here is like the cheap metal they use for Coke and beer cans on earth, so it ain’t worth hardly nothin’, but I get to take a whole spaceship full of it back.. . .

  Angel stops dead still, a look of surprise on his beautiful moon-washed face.

  He’s got a creepy feeling, all right, but it isn’t the usual good eerie feeling of other planets and cities of solid gold. It’s a sick earth feeling—because he has wandered into a dead-end street and he know, he knows, having listened to the sounds with ears of bone and blood and tissue, that there is someone, something coming up behind him.

  THE COWBOY

  ANGEL HAS SEEN HIM before, the “cowboy” he now faces—just once, weeks ago, outside the bar: a tall man about thirty, with streaky blond hair that he keeps tossing from his eyes with quick jerks of his head; lean, but with the kind of chest and arm muscles that suggest he at one time lifted weights. He is good-looking in a strange, off-beat way, with small handsome features but skin that bears the pits and scars of adolescent acne.

  He wears poured-in-tight, faded blue hip-huggers, the heavy mass of his genitals obvious against one leg under a pale lime-colored stain, probably the many yellows of dried urine finally turning the blue of his Levi’s green.

  His boots are shiny brown and high-heeled; the belt is wide and closely studded with small silver stars, and from it, at one side, hang the jangling chained circles of Seven Gates of Hell. On one wrist he has two leather cock rings, both star-studded like his belt; on the other, a wide ornate watchband.