by Lara Parker
“I think it’s where they kept the carriages,” he said. “It was quite an operation, lugging people to and fro without cars.” They peered into a small room with hooks and sawhorses, empty shelves thick with a coating of dust. “All the tack. Saddles and harnesses. All gone now. Sold long ago.” He shivered. “Let’s go. There’s nothing here.”
“What’s that?” In the last room a large humped form was covered by a black cloth and coated with dust and cobwebs. “Do you think it’s a carriage, or a sleigh?”
David shrugged, “I doubt it,” and took her arm. “It’s probably just a wood pile.” He felt a chill. “You know what? I’ve had enough. Let’s get out of here.”
“No, wait. I want to see.” She moved forward into the room before he could stop her, grabbed one side of the cloth, and tugged hard. It was a massive cover, heavy canvas, but it gave a little, causing an avalanche of dirt and debris.
David had a sudden vision of a hoard of rats running out from under the canvas in their direction. “Come on, Jackie, let’s go. It’s nothing.”
But using both hands, she took hold of the fabric and jerked. There was a soft sighing, a swishing, and then, a collapsing of canvas in a great cloud of powder. Something gleamed. Curious now, David pulled the cover to the floor and stood back. He was looking at the most beautiful car he had ever seen.
It was bright enameled green and built like a luxurious carriage, long and rectangular with lots of chrome and glass. And it was completely intact. He walked around it, astounded. The car was huge, with a very long nose, fat whitewall tires, a tan cloth top set on a folding frame, and six bullet-shaped headlamps, two as big as basketballs. He reached out as if it could not be real and touched the chrome radiator grill and the curved exhaust pipes snaking out the side of the engine cover.
“Oh, my God!” David said. “I never knew this was here!”
“What is it?”
“It’s unbelievable! I— I think it’s a Duesenberg! And the paint is perfect … Wow, look at the spare tire and the wire wheels. It’s from the Twenties. What’s this doing here?”
“Maybe it’s a clue—”
David grinned at her conspiratorially and then peered closely at his reflection in the hubcap, which had a small red dot in the center. “He must have been so rich,” he said under his breath.
“Who?”
“The guy who owned this. Why was it kept a secret?”
“It didn’t belong to a guy,” Jackie said, appearing from behind the car. “It belonged to a woman.”
“How do you know?”
“Look. This was in the case hanging on the back.”
She was shaking out a delicate dress, more like a slip, with lace at the collar. She held it up to her body; the top fell across her like a shirt, but the skirt was made up of pleats. “A flapper dress,” she said. “Would it look good on me?”
David smiled as he peeked in the rearview mirror, lifted one of the slender wipers and let it fall back with a snap, then peered through the short windshield.
“Look at this,” said Jackie, excitement in her voice, and he came around to the other side of the car. She was rubbing her hand over a dozen small pockmarks, flaws in the perfect paint job, tiny holes rusted inside. “What do you think?”
“Bullet holes,” said David, and Jackie frowned.
“Can we get inside?” she said. “Maybe the painting is there.”
She had her hand on the door handle and was twisting it down. The heavy door sprang open, and they could see a soft white leather interior and two rows of round dials on a wooden dash.
“Unbelievable,” exclaimed David as they both crawled in. He squeezed behind the varnished steering wheel, pumped the gas pedal, and sighed with amazement. They stared at the bank of round gauges.
“What are those?” Jackie asked.
“Uh … I don’t even know,” he said, studying them. “Speedometer, tachometer—I guess—and that one looks like a stopwatch.” He leaned in to read the labels. “Brake pressure, barometer, altimeter! What did the car do, fly? Look, even a radio!” As though he were driving, he leaned back, took hold of the big wooden bulb of the gearshift, turned to her, and grinned.
“Isn’t it great?”
“Too bad you can’t get it going,” Jackie said.
* * *
An hour later, they were curled up on David’s bed with the book of classic cars his father had given him spread out on the quilt. Jackie had pulled a large blue volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica out of David’s bookcase.
She was disappointed that they had not found the painting, but she had come back to his room—just for a while, she had said—because she didn’t want to go home and get in a fight with her mother.
She had looked up “mythology,” and had been reading about Artemis. Then she had come across the section on the moon.
“Did you know a lunar month is 27.3 days?” she said. “There’s the full moon … the waning gibbous … then the waning crescent—doesn’t that have a beautiful sound, waning crescent? And then the new moon—a tiny fingernail. See? With the old moon in its arms.”
She held up the picture, but David was absorbed in turning the pages in the book of early automobiles. Then he stopped short.
“There it is! Just like the one in the stable!” His eyes were racing down the page. “Can you believe that? I was right. It’s a Doozie.”
Jackie looked over at the picture and said, “Oh, yeah, that’s it. You found it.” And then went back to her reading. “Then there is the waxing crescent, filling back up again … the first quarter, like a slice of cantaloupe … then waxing gibbous—sounds like some kind of monkey! Then the full moon again, in all her glory.” She looked up. “What’s a Doozie?”
“Only the most famous car in the world. Dual Cowl Phaeton, 1929. It could go 135 miles an hour. Back then!”
“But wasn’t it all Model T’s barreling around?” she said, teasing.
He looked at her and frowned. “Are you kidding? There were lots of glamorous cars. This one was the ultimate in luxury. No other car came close! It was all aluminum. That’s why it was so fast!”
She shrugged and smiled. “I liked all the wood.” They both had their books spread out on their laps and underneath their knees were touching. It was warm there. The rest of the world was far away.
“Clark Gable had one, Rudolph Valentino, the King of Spain—I just can’t believe we found it. It’s—it’s like buried treasure!”
“Maybe we were meant to find it,” she said. “I wonder how it got those bullet holes.”
“Model SJ. The world’s finest motorcar. Dual cowl. Yeah, look. See the two windshields, a separate one for the passengers in the backseat? Just like ours!”
Jackie nodded. Then she turned over and lay on her stomach, her attention back on her own reading. “Did you know,” she said, “that the full moon last week was called a Wolf Moon?”
David was sorry she had moved, but he liked looking at the small place where her back dipped before her hips. “What’s a Wolf Moon?” he said, and in his mind he put his hand there.
“It was the Algonquian name for the January full moon. When all the wolves howl.” She stopped for a second. “And the coyotes.”
David felt a tremor of anxiety. He turned a page in his book. “Did you see those bendy things that looked just like air-conditioning hoses sticking out of the side panels?”
“Uh-huh.” She was still reading. “There’s also a Blue Moon this month, a second full moon in January.”
“That was … that was to leave room for the supercharger.” He kept reading, but now he was having trouble concentrating. He could smell her fragrance, and hear the scraping sound of her jeans on his spread.
“The Wolf Moon is huge, bigger than the rest, and blood orange because of where it lies in the orbit. It’s the closest to the earth it will get all year, so it was super powerful.”
David was staring at the page but no longer seeing it, his body trem
bling, his fingers aimlessly stroking the illustrations. Jackie turned over and lay back on the bed. He stole a look at her. The swell of her small breasts and the place where her hip bones protruded. He pretended to read further. But he could feel her watching him.
“What?”
“You’ve forgotten all about me,” she said.
Awkwardly, he closed the book. “No, I haven’t.” He lay back with his hands behind his head. “Tell me more.”
“Remember Artemis?”
“Goddess of the moon.”
“Trailing her gauzy wedding dress through the night sky.”
They both lay side by side looking up at the ceiling as if the moon was up there.
“What’s weird is she ruled over childbirth,” Jackie said, “and yet she had nothing but contempt for mortals in love.”
“Yeah, but just for fun she kept Cupid by her side in her chariot.” He gave Jackie a nudge. “Arrows ready to fire!”
“That’s because she was a huntress. She was the only goddess who wore a short skirt.” She reached up and trailed her fingers in the air. “But she was a virgin.”
David felt a tightness in his throat. “I know. And … no man was ever allowed to look at her.”
They were both quiet for a minute.
“I should go,” she said, sitting up and sliding her legs off the bed.
“Okay,” he said, “I’ll walk you downstairs.” She stood up and he reached out. “Help me up,” he said.
When she touched his hand, he pulled her back down on the bed, both laughing, his arm around her. He lay looking at her, his hand on her hip. They gazed into each other’s eyes for a long moment while he held his breath, and they both smiled and then giggled, before he leaned in and brushed her lips with his.
“What did you say the car was called again?” she said.
“A Duesenberg.”
“No, the other thing.”
“Model J Duel Cowl Phaeton.”
She pushed a curl out of his eyes. “Phaeton?”
David thought a minute then said, “Aaah!” before he reached for her and pulled her against him. “Phaëthon, who drove the chariot of the sun!”
“Serendipity,” she said. “Isle of silk.”
Ten
Dark, a new dark, his veins streams of silver, his breath shallow, a whisper, a faint wind scattering invisible sun motes from his lungs. He was coming back to the world; he could feel it in his heartbeat and in his stiff and hesitant movements, but he was still covered in open wounds, and nightmarish visions disturbed his sleep. With no sense of whether he would survive, Barnabas was tormented by hallucinations, tortured by visions of gnashing teeth that were the design of a malicious imagination, and these were nothing compared to the pain. His body was first on fire and then rigid with cold, and he would pass into a fitful slumber only to be wakened by a fresh flood of guilt. He knew he needed Julia now more than ever, but he had no way to reach her.
The first night Antoinette approached his casket and stared down at him, she shook her head, and did nothing. He was shocked again by her resemblance to Angelique. Her eyes were hard and her haughty expression steely with resentment. Even though he controlled her, and she could not ignore his summons, she showed neither pity nor compassion. Reaching out with feeble fingers, he caught hold of her robe and pulled her to him.
As soon as she was in his arms and he leaned into her throat, he felt a spasm of nausea. Coughing horribly he thrust her away. She had ringed her neck with garlic cloves.
“What have you done?” he cried as he gagged on the smell. “Take that hideous thing off!”
“But garlic is a natural healer,” she said, falsely coy. “It has strong medicinal powers.” And she ripped off the necklace and threw it at him, saying with scorn, “I hope you choke on it!”
Exasperated, he reached for her again, but this time she spun away, fire in her eyes and a sneer on her lips. Walking backward, she reached under her skirt and produced a kitchen knife. The blade glinted in the dim light. Her voice was raw with anger.
“Stay away from me!”
Barnabas sighed wearily. “You cannot inflict any wounds worse than the ones I already have.”
She rocked back and forth on her feet, holding the knife with both hands. “I know what you are. Monster! Don’t come near me. Don’t ever touch me again.”
She was spitting out her words, but the pupils of her eyes were huge and black and they gave her away. Barnabas could tell she was high on the marijuana she smoked, as she swayed, hunched over like a crone, leaning into the knife and waving it about. “Stay away or I’ll kill you!”
With the speed of the wind, he lashed out and knocked the blade from her hands, then rudely pulled her down as she struggled. Pressing her to him he forced his teeth into her neck. She moaned, then cried out in rage. But he held her and she stiffened and stared with glazed eyes, as he rhymed his heartbeat to hers.
The second night she came again and sullenly changed his wrappings, bathed him, and pressed cold compresses on his swollen bruises. Her mood was surly, and her attentions were devoid of compassion. She brought salves and herbs for his dressings, and, although vampires heal quickly, the werewolf’s bites had festered, and they opened and bled again.
When she stretched out at his side as he forced her to do, she was limp and unresponsive, and she seemed more like a bored prostitute than an eager companion. Even though he had hungered for her for so long, now that she was his, she was so distant he found he had no appetite for feeding or for love. Frustrated, he even suspected that her ministrations had made him worse.
That night she tried for the first time to stake him. He woke to find her standing over him, a wild look in her eyes and a sharpened piece of wood pressed against his chest. She had no hammer, only her hands encircling the wood, and she was leaning over, poised to fall on it with her own strength. He rose up and caught her by the throat, and as she screamed, he threw her across the room. She lay curled on the floor weeping, “What have you done to me?” and stared at him with eyes filled with hate.
Because he insisted that she remain close by, the following night she brought a guitar that she strummed to relieve her boredom, and she sang mountain ballads. She had a voice that was wavy and often off key, but as Barnabas slipped in and out of consciousness, he thought he caught snatches of tragic tales, girls murdered by their lovers, youths enslaved by love, or abandoned women who threw themselves into the sea—subjects that seemed to appeal to her.
I met a fair maiden down by the seashore
Where the wind it did whistle and the waters did roar.
“Oh the shells in the ocean will be my death bed
And the fish in deep waters swim over my head.
For I never will marry; I’ll be no man’s wife.
I intend to live single all the days of my life.”
He caught her looking at him when she thought he was asleep and deep chills ran through him when he saw the bitterness in her eyes. He was dismayed because he had believed that when he made her his companion, she would grow to love him. But since he had taken her blood she had become even more indifferent, and she possessed none of the humorous vitality of the Antoinette he had so desired. He could bend her will, but he could not sway her heart.
Each night when she lay with him, he searched her mind for Angelique but did not find her there, which was a deep disappointment, only thoughts cluttered with the magazines she read and the marijuana she smoked. She rolled a joint and tried to share it with him, but he pushed her hand away. Then one morning, just before dawn, she inhaled deeply, set the grass aside, and lay beside him. This time she came to life, her passions aroused as if she were trying to escape into another body, and—arching, heaving, crying out in pleasure—she responded with a savage hunger to his caresses.
He attempted to match her ardor, even in his weakened state, but by now he no longer trusted her and thought it must be another of her ways of manipulating him, hoping to win his favor,
since afterward, when he looked into her eyes, they clouded over, and she refused to acknowledge their intimacy. And then he thought that perhaps she had simply been bored. Most troubling of all was his realization that he would have to decide her fate soon. She was becoming pale and dark circles lingered under her eyes. Should he turn her? He did not want to, and so he had to take care not to drain her. Until he was healed, she was all he had to fill his hours and his needs.
That night he dreamed he saw Angelique, dressed all in wind-blown white standing in the drifts beneath his bedroom window. He knew he was caught up in a nightmare and that she must be a ghost, a shape made of snow, but her smile unnerved him. Reaching up her arms as if to embrace him, she whispered something he could not make out, and all the time her lascivious smile blazed with deception. He felt he must hear what she was saying and he leaned further out of the casement, straining until he caught the words, At last! We are together at last! And she uttered a high-pitched peal of laughter that echoed across the snowy lawn. She tugged at him, as though with invisible wires, dragging him across the window frame until he lost his grip and pitched forward and plunged twenty feet onto the pavement. He woke with his heart pounding.
Antoinette’s second attempt to do him harm came when he was drowsing but not asleep and he heard a rustling beside his coffin. Slowly, tediously, so as not to make a creaking sound, she lifted the lid, and this time she had a metal spike and a steel hammer. She did not hesitate, but slammed the spike quickly with all her strength. His chest collapsed and all the air was knocked out of him, but he was still able to grasp the stake before a second blow came, and his anger lifted him. Rising in the air, he seized her struggling body and—with her screeching like a cat—turned her over and threw her in his casket. He slammed the lid down and held it shut while she wailed to be released. “Never do that again,” he raged, and left her there for an hour, until in a dull voice she begged for pity.
