American Gothic

by Michael Romkey

  “The night air is cool,” he said, “and your friend looks chilly.”

  The only light in the main salon of the nineteenth-century home came from the fireplace and a single lamp beside a leather armchair. Apparently Peregrine had been reading Shakespeare. The book was left open, spine up, on one arm of the chair. Ophelia wondered what play or poem he was reading.

  “Please excuse me,” their host said, and disappeared without explanation.

  Scarlet sprawled out on the couch, legs lewdly splayed, playing her role of überslut without even having to try. The black bustier was cut low enough to expose fully half of the dragon tattoo on her breast over her heart. Her bright red hair was all a-fly. She wore a silver ring in the side of her nose and a studded dog collar around her throat. Her skirt did not quite reach to the top of torn fishnet stockings held in place by an old-fashioned black garter belt, like a 1940s pinup model.

  Peregrine brought back a silver tray. On it were a carafe of coffee, three cups, and matching silver bowls of milk and sugar.

  “I hope you like French roast coffee,” he said as he filled the cups.

  “I like French everything,” Scarlet said, her words slurred.

  “Scarlet is a fledgling,” Ophelia said to Peregrine. “I told her the quickest way to earn bones in the Ravening is with the help of an experienced vampire like you.”

  Peregrine glanced up at Scarlet. “Would you care for cream or sugar, Scarlet?”

  “Both,” she said.

  “I know you must be hungry, Nathaniel,” Ophelia said. “Even in a city like San Francisco, you have to be careful hunting. It must have been so much easier back in the 1800s, before video surveillance cameras and FBI crime databases. Back then, I would imagine it would be an easy matter for people to simply disappear.”

  “I admit that I sometimes wish I could return to an earlier, simpler time.”

  Peregrine put the cup and saucer on the table in front of Scarlet. She had settled back into the corner of the couch and closed her eyes.

  “There you are, Scarlet.”

  The young woman did not move.

  “She needs to take better care of herself, Ophelia.”

  “She took too many downers,” Ophelia said. “I hope it doesn’t make her blood too tainted for you to drink. Does that sort of thing bother you? If you wait a few hours, her system will start to clean itself out. There’s no hurry. Nobody will be the least surprised if Scarlet doesn’t show up at the house where she’s been staying. They’ll probably be relieved. She’s a real piece of work. But then you can see that for yourself.”

  But Ophelia was the one Peregrine was staring at intently. He drew in a slow breath through his nose, almost as if he was savoring the scent of her, smelling things no ordinary mortal could detect.

  “There’s certainly nothing contaminating your blood, Ophelia,” he said.

  “I don’t believe in drugs. Life is bad enough as it is.”

  “Nor do I,” he said, sitting sideways on the couch beside Scarlet but not giving any indication he was going to ravish the girl. Indeed, it looked quite the reverse. He reached for an afghan throw draped over the corner of the couch and covered her, the way he might a sleeping child. “Although there was a time when it was different for me. I was given morphine after an injury and became addicted. It was a difficult time. Drugs are to be avoided.”

  “Especially when the ultimate drug, blood, is there for the taking.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Ophelia.”

  “I know who you are. I know your story. I told you, Nathaniel, I’ve got you dead to rights.”

  “And I’ve told you, Ophelia, you’re mistaken. What you suggest is impossible.”

  Ophelia got up from her chair and unfastened the dog collar around Scarlet’s neck.

  “Look at her, Nathaniel. So young, so warm, so succulent. And perfectly helpless. There are more like her in San Francisco. I can keep you supplied and help clean up afterward, if you’ll do just one small favor for me.”

  Peregrine was already shaking his head.

  “Make me like you,” Ophelia said. “Turn me into a vampire.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Free me from my pain.”

  “I can’t do that. No one can.”

  “Do I ache any less for my mother than you did for your wife and children, after the Confederate raiders burned them to death in your father-in-law’s house in Kansas, where you thought they would be safe while you were off fighting for the Union?”

  Peregrine looked stunned, like a bird that had flown into a window, Ophelia thought.

  “Of course I know about it. It’s all on microfilm from the old papers. You will never be able to blot out your past. The evidence exists in too many places. If you know where to go and what to look for—why, there it is, Nathaniel Peregrine, believed killed at the Battle of Gettysburg, still alive today. Although I doubt many people would recognize you for what you are. But you can’t hide it from me. I am gifted—or cursed—in that way.”

  “Prescient,” Peregrine said dully.

  “The very word I prefer. The term psychic is demeaning. That word has been ruined by charlatans. I knew what you were the first time I saw you, the same way I knew my mother was going to die even before she realized she was sick.”

  “And what do your powers tell you about yourself?”

  Ophelia gave the vampire a pained look. “I don’t know everything.”

  “I know.”

  “I suppose what happens to me depends on you. I’m asking you, begging you, Nathaniel, change me. And if not that, kill me. For a long time I have been half in love with death.”

  “That was Keats’s line.”

  “A vampire who loves poetry—could anything be better?”

  “You have no idea what you ask of me.”

  Ophelia was exultant. “You’ve quit denying it. That is progress.”

  “Do not taunt me,” Peregrine said, becoming angry. “And do not tempt me. I am not the solution to your problems. I did not come to San Francisco to take up your cross and bear it for you. There is no relief in the thing you ask me to do.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Not now, but you would. The only gifts the Change would bring you are loneliness, longing, endless wandering, and more pain. It is not at all what you think.”

  “Then drain me dry and save me the trouble of taking my own life.” Ophelia unfastened the top buttons of her antique Victorian blouse and pulled it open and away from her neck. “Surely you cannot refuse such an offer. You must be hungry. Take my blood. Take as much of it as you need. Drink your fill, and free me from the hell I drag with me on this meaningless slog through life.”

  Though Peregrine did not move, she saw a strange glimmering light in his eyes. She knew that look. It was the same look she had seen in her father’s eyes the nights he would come from the hospice where her mother was dying and look upon the bottles of whiskey, gin, vodka, and brandy kept on the sideboard in the dining room.

  “I offer you my blood, fresh and pure from the body of a healthy female who doesn’t smoke, drink, or take drugs. There are no contaminants in me. Imagine what it will be like to taste me, sweet and intoxicating, the first wine of summer. Is there anything that could bring you more pleasure? And if there is, take that, too. Take whatever you want, Nathaniel. You have the power. I can feel the strength radiating from you—and your desire.”

  Peregrine’s lips drew back in a grimace, the blood teeth coming down from their recesses in his upper jaw. Even the best orthodontic fangs some Ravening players wore were but pathetic imitations of Nathaniel Peregrine’s. His fangs were far narrower than mock movie canines, more like those found in a viper than anything mammalian.

  Peregrine’s arm shot out but not toward Ophelia. He grabbed Scarlet by the red hair and dragged her to him in a quick, cruel embrace. Her head rolled back as he buried his mouth in her neck. She gasped in pain, in pleasure, and threw her
arms around the vampire, pulling him closer.

  Ophelia sat there and watched, too fascinated to be enraged that it was Scarlet’s blood he was drinking instead of her own.

  36

  To Be Like a God

  “WOULD YOU LIKE to sign up for our e-mail newsletter?” Ophelia sighed. “I already get it.”

  The clerk smiled, oblivious to her irritation. The sort of people who worked at Ophelia’s favorite bookstore—ponytailed, latte-sipping, wannabe literati—drove her up the wall. They tended to collect in San Francisco anyway, the city exerting its strange gravitational attraction to the self-consciously hip. But she didn’t want to interact with them, except when circumstances left her no choice.

  “You know, every time I come in here, you ask me that question.”

  “We get in trouble with the manager if we don’t,” the clerk said with a grin. He was wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt. Ophelia was willing to bet he had no more than a vague notion who Guevara was, at best.

  “You have asked me on at least three other occasions if I want to sign up for the e-mail newsletter. I’m in here a couple of times a week.”

  “No, really. Sorry. I don’t remember. And I’d have to ask you even if I did. It’s, like, a rule.”

  “Then it’s, like, a stupid rule,” she said savagely, mocking him. “I have a suggestion for you to share with your manager. Every time I come in here, I have to wait in line while the other hippies who work here stand around talking to one another, pretending they don’t notice the jam-up at the checkout counter, pretending they don’t hear the pages for more assistance at the front desk. Why don’t you do a time study to determine the amount of time the average customer spends standing in line, waiting to give you money to enrich your stockholders. Then set a goal to cut that time in half. Something like that would be of actual service to your customers. Asking people to sign up for an e-mail newsletter—again and again and again—is really just a self-serving attempt to get people on your advertising list so you can spam them mercilessly with pitches to buy the latest pathetically written book that some publisher is trying to turn into a best seller.”

  The next person in the line, a man in a blue blazer, cleared his throat impatiently. The clerk stood there, too terrified to react to the petite young woman decked out in her ankh and Gothic regalia.

  “Oh, forget it,” Ophelia said, snatching up Amy Clampitt’s poetry collection and charging toward the door. The clerk stood holding her receipt, his mouth open. At least he had the presence of mind not to ask her if she wanted it.

  “You missed your appointment.”

  It was Dr. Glass. Squeezing her eyes shut as if against a painful light, Ophelia turned around toward the voice. Glass was standing there, an insipid expression of concern on his face.

  “I didn’t have an appointment.”

  “I made one for you. I left messages on both your answering machine at home and your cell phone.”

  “I told you, Dr. Glass. I’m through with all of that.”

  The psychiatrist stared at her. “Are you absolutely sure? We were finally beginning to make progress.”

  “I am totally sure.”

  He nodded. “I understand.”

  “Good,” she said.

  “Can I give you a lift home? The streets aren’t safe after dark.”

  Ophelia looked up at him. It was interesting how different he looked when he smiled. It was as if he could turn off being a doctor and just become someone ordinary.

  “Sure,” she said. “That would be nice.”

  Dr. Glass led her to a green Jaguar sedan and opened the door for her.

  “What did you buy?”

  “A book of poetry.”

  Glass nodded and pulled into traffic. “Any more thoughts on college?”

  “I’m still thinking I’m not going to go.”

  “Maybe it’s for the best,” Dr. Glass said. “It’s something you have to decide for yourself. Emily Dickinson never went to college.”

  “True. The quickest route to my house is if you take a right here.”

  “We’re not going to your house.”

  “And where are we going?”

  “It’s a surprise.”

  “Dr. Glass.”

  “Trust me,” he said, looking at her full in the face and smiling again.

  Ophelia did not trust the psychiatrist, but there was something almost playful in his manner that made her curious about what he was doing. They drove down toward the bay without talking, Mozart playing quietly on the CD player in the Jaguar. After a short while they entered a down-in-the-heels neighborhood with which Ophelia was more than a little familiar.

  “Are you going where I think you are going?”

  “And where would that be?” Dr. Glass asked, his tone almost teasing.

  They came around the corner and the psychiatrist pulled the car over to the curb across the street from the alley entrance to the Cage Club.

  “How do you know about this place? I didn’t tell you.”

  “I am your doctor, Ophelia. It is my job to know.”

  Ophelia felt her face begin to burn. “You followed me.”

  “Don’t be silly. Professional ethics would prohibit that.”

  Ophelia regarded him closely in the quiet car. He no longer seemed free of the sort of danger women instinctively know to steer clear of, and at the same time the interior of the Jaguar seemed to grow smaller and more confined, an inviting space that only too late she suspected to be a trap.

  She was sitting at an angle to Dr. Glass, so it was easy for her right hand to find the door handle without him seeming to notice. Showing no fear but also with perfect economy of time and motion, she opened the door and got out in a single quick movement. Dr. Glass made no attempt to stop her. She shut the door and stood there, wondering whether she should walk or run toward the Cage Club, when she realized she’d left her new book on the seat. Not that she would risk her safety for the sake of something she could easily replace, but it did make her hesitate a moment. The driver’s door opened and Glass got out of the car, holding the book.

  “You forgot this.”

  He held the book out to her. Ophelia did not move a muscle for a few moments, though it seemed like much longer to her. She couldn’t make up her mind what to do—indeed she couldn’t even manage to consider the options rationally, the thoughts frozen in her mind. Some combination of her upbringing, her uncertainty about the psychiatrist’s motives, and the wish not to act like a timid girl made her step toward Glass. He met her at the front of the car still smiling, the book held out to her. When she took it from him he made no attempt to grab her, no threatening moves. He was, she thought, a completely baffling person.

  “Thank you. I’ll find my own way home from here.”

  “Whatever you wish, Ophelia.”

  “Good night.”

  She turned and started to walk. She could hear his footsteps coming after her, not hurrying, but there, just behind her. She kept going until she got to the door.

  “You can’t come in here.”

  “Of course I can,” Dr. Glass said.

  “The club is only for vampires and fledglings in the Ravening.”

  “So?”

  “I’m not trying to be dramatic, Dr. Glass, but not all of my friends are as nice as I am. There are some boys down there you do not want to meet, especially not in the cellar of the Cage Club, where there isn’t anybody who can help you if things get out of hand. It’s a rough crew.”

  “I can take care of myself,” the psychiatrist said. He made a motion with his hand to get Ophelia’s attention. She looked down, and saw that he was holding a pistol, the streetlight glittering on its silver surface.

  Dr. Glass’s smile was bigger than ever. He put his hand on Ophelia’s arm, and she didn’t dare pull away.

  “My friends will castrate you if you do anything to hurt me, Dr. Glass.”

  “Now you are being dramatic, Ophelia. But not to worry. This is onl
y a precaution,” he said, and waved the gun. “This is just for persuasive purposes. Turn around like a good girl now and in you go.”

  Ophelia opened the door, hoping someone would hear them coming. The sound of industrial metal music throbbed dully, the sound floating up the elevator shaft from the lower level. It was dark inside, almost impossible to see once the outside door closed behind them. But Dr. Glass kept his hand firmly on Ophelia’s arm so that she couldn’t pull away from him.

  The single dim bulb shined through the slats in the grate over the freight elevator. Glass let go of her long enough to raise the gate so they could enter. He seemed familiar with the place, as if he’d been there before. Ophelia thought of Dr. Glass hiding in the shadows, watching her and the others. For the first time, she thought she might be in serious danger. This was followed by a realization that struck her with the force of an epiphany: She did not want to die, at least not at the hands of someone like Dr. Glass.

  Glass pushed the elevator button with the barrel of his weapon. The elevator began to rise.

  “I see surprise in your face,” he said.

  Ophelia didn’t answer.

  “I know perfectly well about the basement revels. Our business is upstairs.”

  She was suddenly wet with sweat, though it was chilly in the elevator. Ophelia tightened her hold on the slim volume of poetry. She could hit him in the head with it, but she doubted it would even stun him.

  The elevator stopped.

  “Here we are.” He raised and lowered his eyebrows.

  Through the slats in the elevator door came a flickering glow, but even when Dr. Glass raised the gate, the source was too diffused to make out. He took her by the arm and led her through the abandoned department store. Someone had stapled huge sheets of translucent plastic from the ceiling.

  “Careful,” Dr. Glass warned, stepping over a fallen light fixture. “This place is a real mess. But you know that.”

  Ophelia didn’t know it, for the Ravening had confined its activities to the basement. Certainly some of the boys had explored the rest of the building, but Ophelia had never been on the upper floors.