American Gothic

by Michael Romkey

  “Nathaniel has leukemia?”

  The concern in her voice was particularly galling, especially so soon after Lavalle’s confession of love.

  “I do not know exactly what Peregrine has. It’s nothing I’ve encountered in the literature, and with all modesty, I’ve studied every monograph on the subject of blood pathology worth reading. His blood has a tremendous excess of red blood cells, which carry the oxygen to the body. But his red cells are unstable. There is an unnaturally high degree of premature cellular necropsy—cell death.”

  “Is he dying?”

  “I am afraid so. I don’t know how anybody could live with such abnormal blood.”

  “I feel sorry for you, Michael. You have two close friends on the island, and both are invalids.”

  “Save your pity, my dear. I will find a way to get by.” He thought of the syringe waiting back at his house. “I always do.”

  “Nathaniel says he has learned to live with his condition.”

  “That is highly unlikely, from a medical standpoint.”

  “He says he can help me overcome my own illness.”

  “My dear Helen,” Lavalle said in a long sigh. “There is nothing I would rather do than give you hope, but there can be none. No doubt Peregrine means well, but it was cruel of him to lead you on.”

  “Promise me you’ll try to help Nathaniel, even if you can’t help me.”

  “I will do what I can, of course. I am a physician.”

  “But the two of you are also rivals of a sort.”

  Lavalle almost asked Lady Fairweather whom she preferred—him or Peregrine—but he lacked the nerve. It would only make him feel worse to know it was Peregrine she loved.

  “That hardly matters now. Not for any of us.”

  “Please try to help him. I care for you both very much. Promise me, Michael. Do it for my sake.”

  “I promise.”

  Lady Fairweather smiled, at last satisfied. Peregrine’s health notwithstanding, Lavalle planned to flee the island as soon as Helen died. What did it matter if he lied? She would never know.

  “Have you ever noticed that there is something peculiar about Nathaniel?”

  Lavalle snorted. “He is an American. They’re all peculiar.”

  “It is nice of you to try to lighten my spirits.”

  Lavalle shrugged. More cocaine would lighten his own.

  “I think there is something different about Nathaniel, though I can’t quite put my finger on it,” Lady Fairweather said. “I think there are secrets in his past.”

  “There are secrets in all of our pasts.”

  “Not mine, Michael.”

  “No, I suppose not,” Lavalle said, and smiled sadly. “You are too good for this world. Perhaps you should have been a bit more like me.”

  “You’re a good man, Michael.”

  That was not true, of course, but not even Lavalle was a big enough cad to contradict the dying woman.

  24

  Basic Research

  LAVALLE GASPED WITH frustration and rolled off the prostitute.

  The doctor lay on his back in the dark, panting, feeling his sweat soak into the sheets. At least the linens were clean. He always insisted on that when he visited the brothel.

  The whore sat up in bed. He could see her profile in silhouette against the open window. She wasn’t the youngest or the prettiest, but her body came closest to matching Lady Fairweather’s elegant frame. The smell of the perfume he’d given the prostitute to wear was still strong in the air. It was Helen’s perfume. Lavalle had stolen a little of it that afternoon while Lady Fairweather got ready for her examination, in order to make this little charade more realistic.

  Seeing Helen nearly naked, touching the softness of her breast with his stethoscope, had filled Lavalle with a crude desire that she was far too ill to satisfy without risking hemorrhage. He had had his chance, between her husband’s death and Peregrine’s arrival, but he had let it pass by. One always thought there would be an opportunity for these things, but there was never any way to know how much time was left. The future was an illusion and the end usually never very far away.

  “Are you finished, Monsieur le Docteur?”

  Lavalle struck a match and brought it to his cigarette. He filled his lungs with smoke and answered with the exhalation.

  “Oui.”

  No doubt she was finished with him, too. He had pounded away for nearly an hour without attaining release. That was the way it was when he was on the cocaine. The desire was powerful but usually not the ability to finish, no matter how raw or exhausted he and his paid lovers became.

  The woman got up, pulling the sheet around her. The door opened and closed. It was Lavalle’s preference to be left alone when it was finished. He made it a habit only to come to the brothel when the lust was more than he could bear, but once he was done, he did not want the whore’s company. As exotic and forbidden as it was to make love to an island woman, afterward he felt disgusted with himself in a way that he never had with a Parisian prostitute.

  Poor Helen. He had seen her in his mind’s eye the entire time he had been ravaging the black woman, even as he had smelled her stolen perfume on the whore’s skin. The charade had worked far too well. As much as he wanted to fantasize about fucking Lady Fairweather, he could not for a moment forget the awful fact that she was doomed to waste away before his eyes over the coming weeks, her face turning cadaverous, her lusterless skin hanging off of bones that would weigh very little when the time came to lift her into a coffin.

  Feeling very low indeed, Lavalle lit a candle. From his jacket he took out the little black leather case that held the silver syringe he reserved for his personal use and a vial of white powder.

  There was another horse tied to the hitch outside beside Napoleon, a black stallion that looked familiar to Lavalle.

  “Just the man I was looking for.”

  Lavalle spun around to see that Peregrine had come up behind him without his notice. He must have come out of the brothel, but the doctor hadn’t heard footsteps. Peregrine had a way of creeping up on Lavalle that the doctor found particularly disconcerting, an attribute, no doubt, of the American’s lack of the deeper European sense of culture and deportment.

  “Should you be out this time of night?” Lavalle looked the other man up and down. He showed no outward sign of illness. Just the reverse, in fact. Peregrine projected his usual air of vigor. He was dressed all in black, with leather English hunting boots that came up to his knees. The stallion was Peregrine’s. “How do you feel?”

  “Quite fine, thank you.”

  “That’s difficult to imagine, having had a look at your blood under the microscope.”

  “Which is exactly what I came to talk to you about.”

  Lavalle unfastened Napoleon’s reins from the hitch. “If you want to come along to the house, I’ll give you a brandy and we can discuss your case. I don’t suppose a brandy will do you much harm.”

  “It hasn’t so far,” Peregrine said, and grinned in the darkness.

  The American’s ill health notwithstanding, Lavalle wished he had Peregrine’s fine white teeth.

  “I rode over to Helen’s earlier,” Peregrine said, swinging his leg over the saddle. “She told me the bad news.”

  Lavalle felt like brooding, but the cocaine made him talkative. Still, he managed to keep silent for a few moments as they rode side by side along the darkened street. Lamps and even candles were a luxury for most of the people in Cap Misère, who went to bed with the sun.

  “She said you knew she was sick.”

  “I sensed it.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. Like I said, I sensed it. I know things sometimes. I pick them up. It is difficult to explain.”

  “Like a gypsy fortune-teller?”

  Peregrine laughed softly. “Something like that, but without tarot cards or crystal balls.”

  “Sometimes you say the damnedest things, Peregrine.”

 
“You haven’t heard the half of it.”

  Lavalle’s stable boy took their horses, and the men went into the house. The doctor lit the lamps in his study and poured them both snifters of his finest cognac. Peregrine deserved as much, given how little time he had to live.

  “Is there anything you can do for Helen?”

  “There is nothing anyone can do for the poor woman.” Lavalle looked at Peregrine past lowered eyebrows. “You shouldn’t fill her head with false hopes.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t be evasive, Peregrine. You told Lady Fairweather you could help her.”

  “I can,” Lavalle said with what seemed to be perfect earnestness.

  “Stop it! She’s dying and we both know it. There is no treatment for acute myeloid leukemia and certainly no cure.”

  “That may be true, but with my help she can live as long as she likes.”

  Lavalle stared with slack-jawed disbelief, but his mind, quick even without the cocaine to drive his thoughts ever faster, soon generated the hypothesis that Peregrine wasn’t merely trying to provoke him.

  “How long have you been sick?” Lavalle asked, sounding more like a kindly physician than a drug-addicted, lovesick man.

  “For many years.”

  “I find that difficult to imagine. Your blood cells are severely damaged.”

  “I know.”

  “How aware are you that the condition is influencing your thinking? Are you subject to bizarre fantasies? Do you sometimes find it difficult to distinguish between reality and something you have dreamed?”

  “The problem is not with my mind, Lavalle.”

  The doctor did not contradict the American, but looked at him with a self-satisfied smile.

  “You think I’m mad.”

  “You have been saying things that are not rational. That you know things. That you can somehow save Lady Fairweather from a quick and tragic death. Frankly, I am surprised I have not seen evidence of this incipient psychosis before, my poor friend. It must be linked somehow to your blood condition. We have spent many an evening playing chess and talking. I should have noticed.”

  “Do you think you can help me?”

  “With your condition?” Lavalle sat up straight. “I will have to do more tests. I would be lying if I told you to be optimistic. The damage is too severe.”

  “I came to Haiti because you are one of the world’s preeminent specialists in disorders of the blood.”

  “It is kind of you to say so, but even if it is true, how do you know about my work?”

  “Because I sought out the best doctors in Europe looking for a cure.”

  Lavalle took a mouthful of cognac but held it in his mouth, his mind racing.

  “Do you know…”

  “Of course. In a way, the fact that you’re a fugitive made it more convenient for me. And the fact that you had gone away to live in a remote place also suited my purposes. I am an extremely private person, Lavalle. I do not want anyone to know about my illness.”

  But the doctor was hardly listening.

  “I have done a very evil thing,” he said into his glass.

  “Yes, but your crime is of no consequence to me. You have an unhappy love affair and a crime in your past. I have an unhappy love affair with a Creole woman and many crimes in my past, and before that a sorrow I still cannot bear to think about. The only thing I care about, Doctor, is that you help me. I will give you money, if you need it. I have more wealth than I could ever spend.”

  Lavalle waved his hand dismissively.

  “If you change your mind, my resources are at your disposal,” Peregrine said. “If Toussaint bleeds you dry with his blackmail, you can come to me for help.”

  Lavalle nearly choked. “How do you know about Toussaint?”

  Now it was Peregrine’s turn to look satisfied. “You were wrong about the islanders not welcoming a white man to their voodoo ceremonies.” He burst into laughter. “If you could see your face, Doctor!”

  “I cannot believe you would be so foolish as to involve yourself in peasant witchery, Peregrine.”

  “It’s harmless. Well, mostly.” The American winked. “You’d be amazed at the things you would learn if you could bring yourself to deal with the peasants on their own level. I tried to talk Toussaint out of blackmailing you, but you know how it is with the police in a place like this. The government assumes they’ll make most of their salary through their own initiative. And they always do.”

  “Then the prefect should live very well for the next few years, thanks to me.”

  Peregrine slid his chair closer and leaned forward, forearms on his knees. “I’ll tell you my plan. I’ll help Helen. You don’t have to worry about her. She will not die. What you do need to do is devote your talents to finding a way to treat us both. Helen will be trading one disease for another, her leukemia for what I have.”

  “Peregrine, please! You’re talking nonsense.”

  “No. You don’t know what you’re dealing with, but when you do, it all will become plain. I have not been entirely honest with you, though in fairness I must point out that you have not been overly honest with me, either. I am a rare creature, a member of a small and secretive race.”

  “Of course you are.”

  “You do not need to indulge me. I am no lunatic. Do you remember being followed the other night, coming home from my plantation house?”

  Lavalle felt the blood drain from his face.

  “And then you were attacked in your house—in this room, in fact.”

  Lavalle ran his hand again and again through his hair, searching his mind.

  “You can’t quite remember, can you? The memory was repressed, but this will help you remember.”

  The American reached over and touched Lavelle lightly on the forearm. The doctor threw his hands up in horror as the experience fell back down on him with enough immediacy to leave him shaking—the shadowy form coming up fast from behind, an irresistible force that swarmed over him, driving him to the ground, helpless against the strange sensation that someone was forcing his way into Lavalle’s mind. But even worse was the sense of menace, the sensation of being at the mercy of a lethal malice that was utterly devoid of mercy. And yet, he had survived.

  “I knew that you were considering fleeing Cap Misère,” Peregrine said as Lavalle looked out from between his lowering arms. “I needed to assess the chance that you would stay, that you would agree to help me—and Helen. What I saw in your mind convinced me, so I did not bother you in any other ways. It would have been such a waste to have killed you when you could be such a valuable tool.”

  The American smiled so that Lavalle could see two wicked supernumerary fangs extending from the upper jaw. Peregrine moved the muscles of his cheeks in a grimace and the teeth disappeared under his lip.

  “Your supposition is entirely correct, Doctor. My blood teeth retract into the upper jaw when I do not need them. You see, my friend, I am a vampire. I am also, I almost regret to say, responsible for the recent deaths that have been such a concern to you. I require meals of fresh human blood. I suppose it has something to do with the sorry state of my own blood. I will leave that up to you to determine. You’re the physician and scientist, not I.”

  Lavalle felt a peculiar tingling sensation in his head, as if something was gently moving within his brain. Maybe he was having a stroke. His blood pressure spiked after each cocaine injection, putting him at risk. The lack of sleep, the overindulgence: Could this all be an elaborate paranoid hallucination?

  “A vampire possesses many powers that would seem strange to you, Lavalle. That is how I know that at this moment you are wondering if the cocaine binge you have been on has filled your mind with fearful fantasies. What is that word you use to describe it? Paranoid. You have been reading Dr. Freud lately, haven’t you? He has strange ideas. Do you think he is right about sex being the root of most people’s unhappiness? It is an interesting idea. I shall have to r
ead him for myself to see if I agree.”

  “You can read my mind.”

  “But of course, and I can be far more subtle about it than I just was, but I wanted you to feel me inside your mind. Probing your thoughts is how I was able to verify that despite your many virtues, my good doctor, you are at heart a coward. You will do what you can to help Helen and me because you realize there is nowhere you can go to escape me if you don’t.”

  It was suddenly very close in the room. Lavalle took out his handkerchief and patted the perspiration from his forehead.

  “Whatever you need I will supply it. Money. Equipment for your laboratory. Cocaine. I had Toussaint send a man to Port-au-Prince to fetch you some. I realized you were worried about running low the other night when I was rummaging around inside your mind. You won’t have to be concerned about the shipment from New Orleans being late again. You can have as much cocaine as you want, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of your work.”

  Lavalle began to shake his head slowly. What the American was telling him defied his every certainty. It was madness.

  “Not madness,” Peregrine said.

  The doctor pressed his fingers against his head. “I can’t accept this. I can’t.”

  “Think of it this way, my friend,” Peregrine said, his voice reassuring. “You have just made an unprecedented medical discovery, one of those unsuspected leaps that turn the world on its head and redefine all understanding. Someday your name will be mentioned in the same breath as Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton. You will be the first scientist to investigate the heretofore undocumented condition that transforms ordinary men into beings with superhuman powers, along with one monstrous need. You find the cure for me and others of my tortured race, who are compelled to prey on people like cattle. Your research may even extend the life span and intellect of the entire human race. The knowledge you gain will bring an end to a race of demons. In the process, you will transform men into gods. And you, Doctor, will be remembered throughout history not as a murderer, but as the visionary father of the New Man.”

  Peregrine waited for Lavalle’s reaction, but the doctor was too stunned to speak. His awe at the secrets glimpsed that night was too far-reaching to take in all at once. He sat leaning forward in his chair, his face near the vampire’s, his breathing quick and shallow. This must be how it felt for a bold explorer who, happening upon an unsuspected and wondrous new continent, is overcome with the rich enormity of possibilities.