Lasher lotmw-2

by Anne Rice

  Yes, one of the family had come to visit once. A Lauren Mayfair, rather stiff. “You would have never known she was American.” The old woman thought that was hilarious. “But she didn’t care for it here, you know. She took some pictures from the family and was off at once to London. I remember her saying she was going on to Rome. She loved Italy. I don’t suppose most people love both climes-the damp Highlands and sunny Italy.”

  “Italy,” he whispered. “Sunny Italy.” His eyes were filling with tears. Hastily he wiped them on his napkin. The woman had never noticed. She was talking on and on.

  “But what do you know about the Cathedral?” he asked. For the first time in all his brief life, as Rowan had known it, he looked tired to her. He looked almost frail. He’d wiped his eyes several times more with a handkerchief, saying it was an “allergy” and not tears, but she could see he was cracking.

  “That’s just it, we’ve been wrong about it before, we don’t put forth many theories. Definitely the grand Gothic structure was built around 1228, same time as Elgin, but it incorporated an earlier church, one possibly which contained stained-glass windows. And the monastery was Cistercian, at least for a while. Then it became Franciscan.”

  He was staring at her.

  “There seems to have been a cathedral school, perhaps even a library. Oh, God only knows what we are going to find. Yesterday we found a new graveyard. You have to realize people have been carrying off stones from this place for centuries. We’ve only just unearthed the ruins of the thirteenth-century south transept and a chapel we didn’t know was there, containing a burial chamber. This definitely involves a saint, but we cannot identify him. His effigy is carved on top of the tomb. We’re debating. Dare we open it? Dare we seek to find something in there?”

  He said nothing. The stillness around them was suddenly unnerving; Rowan was afraid he would cry out, do something utterly wild, draw attention to them. She tried to remind herself that it would be perfectly fine if this happened. She felt sleepy, heavy with milk. The old woman talked on and on about the castle, about the warring of the clans in these parts, the endless battles and slaughter.

  “What destroyed the Cathedral?” Rowan asked. The lack of chronology was disturbing to her. She wanted a chart in her mind.

  He glared at her angrily, as if she’d no right to speak.

  “I’m not sure,” said the old woman. “But I have a hunch. There was some sort of clan war.”

  “Wrong,” he said softly. “Look deeper. It was the Protestants, the iconoclasts.”

  She clapped her hands almost with glee. “Oh, you must tell me what makes you think so.” She went on a tirade about the Protestant Reformation in Scotland, the burning of witches that had gone on for a century or more right to the very end of the history of Donnelaith, cruel cruel burnings.

  He sat dazed.

  “I’ll bet you’re absolutely right. It was John Knox and his reformers! Donnelaith had remained, right up to the bloody fire, a powerful Catholic stronghold. Not even wicked Henry the Eighth could suppress Donnelaith.”

  The woman was now repeating herself, and going on at length about how she hated the political and religious forces which destroyed art and buildings. “All of that magnificent stained glass, imagine!”

  “Yes, beautiful glass.”

  But he had received all she had to give.

  As evening fell they went out again. He had been silent, not hungry, not disposed for love, and not letting her out of his sight. He walked ahead of her, all the way across the grassy plain until they came again to the Cathedral. Much of the excavations of the south transept was sheltered by a great makeshift wooden roof, and locked doors. He broke the glass on a window, and unlocked a door and went inside. They were standing in the ruins of a chapel. The students had been rebuilding the wall. Much earth had been dug away from one central tomb, with the figure of a man carved on the top of it-almost ghostly now that it was so worn away. He stood staring down at it, and then up at what they had restored of the windows. In a rage he began to beat on the wooden walls.

  “Stop, they’ll come,” she cried. But then she lapsed back, thinking, Let them come. Let them put him in jail for a madman. He saw the cunning in her eyes, the hate which for a moment she could not disguise.

  When they got back to the inn, he started listening to his own tapes, then turning them off, rummaging through his pages. “Julien, Julien, Julien Mayfair,” he said.

  “You don’t remember him, do you?”

  “What?”

  “You don’t remember any of it-who Julien was or Mary Beth or Deborah, or Suzanne. You’ve been forgetting all along. Do you remember Suzanne?”

  He stared at her, blanched and in a silent fury.

  “You don’t remember,” she taunted again. “You started to forget in Paris. Now you don’t know who they were.”

  He approached her, and sank down on his knees in front of her. He seemed wildly excited, the rage going into some rampant and acceptable enthusiasm.

  “I don’t know who they were,” he said. “I’m not too sure who you are! But I know now who I am!”

  Past midnight, he’d wakened her in the act of rape, and when it was done, he wanted to go, to get away before anyone came to look for them. “These Mayfairs, they must be very clever people.”

  She laughed bitterly.

  “And what sort of monster are you?” she asked. “You’re nothing I made. I know that now. I’m not Mary Shelley!”

  He stopped the car and dragged her out into the high grass and struck her again and again. He struck her so hard he almost broke the bones of her jaw. She shouted a warning to him, that the damage would be irreparable. He stopped his blows and stood over her with his fists clenched.

  “I love you,” he said, crying, “and I hate you.”

  “I know just what you mean,” she answered dully. There was so much pain in her face she thought perhaps he had broken her nose and her jaw. But it wasn’t so. Finally she sat up.

  He had flopped down beside her, all knees and elbows, and with his large warm hands began to caress her. In pure confusion, she sobbed against his chest.

  “Oh, my God, my God, what shall we do?” she asked. He was stroking her, covering her with kisses, suckling her again, all of his old tricks, his evil tricks, the Devil slipping into the cell of the nun, get away from me! But she didn’t have the courage to do anything. Or was it the physical strength she lacked? It had been so long since she had felt normal, healthy, vital.

  The next time he became angry, it was when they’d stopped for gas and she’d wandered near the phone booth. He caught her, and she began to say very fast an old rhyme that her mother had taught her:

  Alas! Alas! for Miss Mackay!

  Her knives and forks have run away;

  And when the cups and spoons are going,

  She’s sure there is no way of knowing!

  Just as she hoped, it made him weak with laughter. He actually fell to his knees. Such big feet he had. She stood there over him chanting:

  Tom, Tom, the piper’s son,

  Stole a pig and away he run,

  The pig was eat, and Tom was beat

  And Tom went crying down the street.

  He begged her to stop, half laughing, half crying. “I have one for you,” he cried, and he leapt up and sang as he danced, slamming his feet on the ground, and slapping his thighs:

  The sow came in with the saddle.

  The little pig rocked the cradle.

  The dish jumped over the table

  To see the pot swallow the ladle.

  The spit that stood behind the door

  Threw the pudding-stick on the floor.

  “Odsplut!” said the gridiron,

  “Can’t you agree?

  I’m the head constable,

  Bring them to me!”

  And then he grabbed her roughly, teeth clenched, and dragged her back to the car.

  When they reached London, her face was entirely swollen. Anyo
ne who caught a glimpse of her was alarmed. He put them up in a fine hotel, though where it was she had no idea, and he fed her hot tea and sweets and sang to her.

  He said that he was sorry for all he’d done, that he had been reborn, did she not realize this, what it meant? That in him resided a miracle. Then came the predictable kissing and suckling and a coarse rough-and-tumble sex that was as good as any. This time, out of sheer desperation, she pushed him to do it again. Maybe she did this because it was the only way she could exert her will. She discovered that after the fourth time even he was spent, and he lay sleeping. She didn’t dare move. When she sighed, he opened his eyes.

  He was now truly beautiful. The mustache and beard were of biblical length and shape and each morning he clipped them appropriately. His hair was very long. His shoulders were too big but it didn’t matter. His entire appearance was regal, majestic. Are those words for the same thing? He bowed to people when he spoke, he tipped his soft shapeless gray hat. People loved to look at him.

  They went to Westminster Abbey and he walked through the entire place studying every detail of it. He watched the faithful moving about. He said at last: “I have only one simple mission. Old as the earth itself.”

  “What is that?” she asked.

  He did not answer her.

  When they reached the hotel he said:

  “I want your study to begin in earnest. We shall get a secure place…not here in Europe…in the States, so close to them that they won’t suspect. We need everything. Cost must be no obstacle. We will not go to Zurich! They’ll be looking for you there. Can you arrange for large amounts of money?”

  “I already have,” she reminded him. It was clear from this and other remarks that he did not remember simple things well in sequence. “The bank trail is well laid. We can go back to the States if you wish.”

  In fact, her heart silently leapt at the thought of it.

  “There is a neurological institute in Geneva,” she said. “That’s where we should go. It’s famous worldwide. It’s vast. We can do some work there. And complete all the arrange-States. They are going to be looking for you. And for me. We must return. I am thinking of the place.”

  She fell asleep, dreaming only of the lab, the slides, the tests, the microscope, of knowledge as though it were exorcism. She knew of course she could not do it on her own. The best she could do was get computer equipment and record her findings. She needed a city full of laboratories, a city where hospitals grew as if on trees, where she could go to one large center and then another…

  He sat at the table reading the Mayfair History over and over. His lips moved so fast, it was the humming again. He laughed at things in the history as if they were entirely new to him. He knelt by her and looked into her face.

  He said, “The milk’s drying up, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know. There is so much aching.”

  He began to kiss her. He took some milk between his fingers and put it on her lips; she sighed. She said it tasted like water.

  In Geneva, everything was planned, down to the last detail.

  The most obvious choice for their final destination was the city of Houston, Texas. Reason? There were, very simply, hospitals and medical centers everywhere. Every form of medical research went on in Houston. She would find a building perhaps for them, some medical space now vacant due to the oil depression. Houston was overbuilt. It had three downtowns, they said. No one could find them there.

  Money was no obstacle. Her large transfers were safe in the giant Swiss Bank. She had only to set up some sort of dummy accounts in California and in Houston.

  She lay in bed, his fingers tight around her wrist, thinking Houston, Texas, only one hour by air from home. “Only one hour.”

  “Yes, they’ll never guess,” he said. “You might as well have taken us to the South Pole, you couldn’t have thought of a more clever hiding place.”

  Her heart sank. She slept. She was sick. When she woke she was bleeding. Miscarriage again, this time the viscid core was perhaps two inches long, maybe even longer, before it had begun to disintegrate.

  In the morning after she had rested, she took a stand. She was going to the institute, to test this thing, and to run what tests she could on him. She screamed and screamed. And finally in terror, and misery, he consented.

  “You’re frightened to be without me, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “What if you were the last man on earth?” he asked. “And I were the last woman?”

  She didn’t know what that meant. But he seemed to know. He took her to the institute. All the normal motions of life were now nothing to him-hailing cabs, tipping, reading, walking, running, going up in an elevator. He had bought himself a cheap little wooden flute in a store, and he played it on the street, very dissatisfied with it, and with his own ability to make melodies with it. He didn’t dare buy a radio. It would get its hands around his throat.

  Again, at the institute, she managed a white coat, a chart, a pencil, the things she needed, forms from a raft of desktop pockets, yellow, pink, blue slips for various tests, and began to fill out the bogus orders.

  She was at one minute his doctor, at another the technician, and whenever questioned, he rattled away like a celebrity in hiding.

  In the midst of it all, she managed to fill out a long note on one of the triplicate forms, addressed to the concierge at the hotel, instructing him to arrange for a medical shipment. The address Samuel Larkin, M.D., University Hospital, San Francisco, California. She would make available the material as soon as she could. The concierge was to charge her account for overnight delivery, heat-sensitive medical material.

  When they returned to the hotel room, she picked up a lamp and struck him. He reeled and then fell down, blood spattering from his face, into his eyes, but he came back, that wonderfully plastic skin and bones, like an infant surviving a fall from a ridiculously high window. He grabbed her and beat her again, until she lost consciousness.

  In the night she woke. Her face was swollen, but the bones were not broken. One of her eyes was almost shut. That would mean days in this room. Days. She did not know if she could endure it.

  The next morning he tied her to the bed for the first time. He used bits and pieces of sheet and made powerful knots, and had it half done when she awoke and discovered the gag in her mouth. He was gone for hours. No one came to the room. Surely some warning or instructions had been issued. She kicked, screamed, to no avail. She could not make a sound that was loud enough.

  When he returned, he took the phone out of hiding and ordered a feast for her and once again begged her forgiveness. He played his small flute.

  As she ate, he watched her every move. His eyes were thoughtful, speculating.

  The next day she did not fight when he tied her up, and this time it was with the masking tape he’d brought back the day before, and quite impossible to break. He was going to tape her mouth when she advised him calmly that she might smother. He settled on a less painful and efficient gag. She went mad struggling after he left. It did no good. Nothing did any good. The milk leaked from her breasts. She was sick, and the room spun.

  The following afternoon, after they had made love, he lay on top of her, heavy, sweet, his soft black hair between her breasts, his left hand on her right hand, dreaming, humming. She was not tied. He had cut the tape cuffs and let them dangle. He would make new ones when he wanted them.

  She looked at the top of his head, at the shining black mane, she breathed in the scent of him, and pressed her body against his weight, and then lapsed back half into sleep for an hour.

  Still he had not waked up. He was breathing deeply.

  She reached over with her left hand and picked up the phone. Nothing else in her stirred. She managed to hold the earpiece and punch the button for the desk, and she spoke so low they could barely hear her.

  It was night in California. Lark listened to what she had to say. Lark had been her boss. Lark was her friend. Lark was the only
person who might believe her, the only person who would vow to take these specimens to Keplinger. Whatever happened to her, these specimens had to be taken to Keplinger. Mitch Flanagan was the man there she trusted, though he might not remember her.

  Somebody had to know.

  Lark tried to ask her all sorts of questions. He could not hear her, he said, speak up. She told him she was in danger. And might be interrupted at any moment. She wanted to blurt out the name of the hotel, but she was divided. If he came to look for her while she was still helpless, possibly she could not get the specimens out of here. Her mind was overwrought. She couldn’t reason. She was babbling something to Lark about the miscarriages. Then Lasher looked up, snatched the phone from her hand, ripped the entire apparatus out of the wall and started to hit her.

  He stopped because she reminded him that the marks would show. They had to go to America. They should leave tomorrow. And when he tied her up she wanted him to make everything looser. If he kept tying her up so tight she would lose the use of her limbs. There was an art to keeping a prisoner.

  He wept in a dry quiet way. “I love you,” he said. “If only I could trust you. If only you could be my helpmate, if you give me your love and trust. But I made you what you are, a calculating witch. You look at me and you try to kill me.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “But we should go to America now, unless you want them to find us.”

  She thought if she did not get out of this room she would go completely mad and be useless. She tried to make a plan. Cross the sea, get closer to home. Get closer. Houston is closer.

  A dull hopelessness covered everything. She knew now what she had to do. She had to die before she conceived by this being again. She could not give birth to another, could not. But he was breeding with her; he had impregnated her twice already. Her mind went blank with fear. For the first time in her life, she understood why some human beings cannot act when they are frightened, why some freeze and stare in a meek fashion.