by Lara Parker
The next night she played a mournful mountain ballad with many verses about a young girl murdered by her lover.
Down by the rippling water, my love and I did meet.
And all while she was in my arms, my love dropped off to sleep
I had a bottle of fair moonshine, which my true love did not know
And there I poisoned that dear little girl down by the banks below.
All the songs seemed to be about men trying to escape from the clutches of desperate women.
I stabbed her with a dagger that was a bloody knife.
I threw her in the river, which was an awful sight.
My father had often told me that wedded I would be
If I did not murder that poor little girl that would not set me free.
She was even paler than before, and thinner, and her skin took on a bluish tint. He was feeling less pain and he wondered whether he was affected from drinking her blood so adulterated with marijuana. She had become especially quiet sitting next to him, and he said to her, “Do you despise me so much?”
Her eyes caught the light for a moment and she made a scoffing sound. “Why? Am I supposed to love you along with everything else?” She lifted up her head, reassuming her rude attitude. “Do you love me?” she said, her voice hard. “I don’t think you care a bit.” When he didn’t respond she said, “I had a real lover before all this.”
He felt the familiar stab of jealousy. “Yes, and what has become of Quentin?”
She turned her face to the side and said, “When he saw what has happened to me, I mean, when he saw this”—and she touched the puncture wounds on her neck—“he was repulsed. Does that satisfy you? You have ruined me.”
“Still, if he had loved you, would he have abandoned you?”
“There was another reason.”
“And what was that?”
“Why should I tell you? Nothing matters to you but your own needs.”
“Because, I think you want to.”
“It sounds ridiculous. There was a painting, one I never saw, a portrait of him. He insisted that I had lost it and he became furious with me. Over such a small thing. Some stupid picture.”
He wanted to say, “But I know where it is,” and yet he kept silent. He wanted to confess, “I was to blame. I stumbled across his portrait in the basement of the Old House, and in a fit of jealousy, because of my infatuation with you, I took the painting and hid it in the Collins cemetery.” How well he remembered. At first he had thought to throw it into the sea! It had been the feckless act of a human rather than a vampire, a human capable of frivolous actions. He wanted to reveal everything, but instead he said nothing. She began another song.
Oh I’ll tell you a little story about Omie Wise
And how she got deluded by John Lewis’s lies
Barnabas lay back and closed his eyes. Antoinette’s voice grew shaky as though she was on the verge of tears. He was drifting off, but once again he knew what was coming.
She threw her arms around him and trembled in fear.
“How could you kill a one who was to you so dear?”
Another murder of an innocent maiden seduced and abandoned. He wondered whether she knew any songs about a girl killing a vampire.
Each evening Barnabas tried, and failed, to climb from his coffin and fly into the night; he wanted to find his way to the cemetery and recover the painting. But even a few steps toward the door left him faint, and his cuts opened again. Even more tortured by guilt, he thought of Julia and how much he needed her now if he was to become whole. How differently Julia had cared for him, giving him her heart and her love. How unselfish she had been, and now his only link to the outside world was this wretched woman who served him stubbornly and seemed only to be waiting for her chance to escape. He began to realize that he must be vigilant and never sleep deeply because, even though she was growing weaker, he knew she was determined to destroy him.
As he lay waiting for his blackened wounds to heal, he tried to piece together what he could remember of Quentin’s doomed existence. One evening, in an effort to arouse Antoinette’s spirits, he spoke to her in a gruff voice.
“I remember the painting you spoke of. The portrait was made by a well-known artist sometime near the end of the nineteenth century.”
She was reading the tarot, a desultory pastime she pursued with only a modicum of passion, shuffling the cards and dealing them out in the pattern of a cross, then sighing as if they had revealed something painful, and gathering them up again. She told him she was reading his cards as well, but he considered the tarot feeble witchcraft, even though he believed it was beyond her talents.
“You remember it?” She appeared interested enough to look up from her spread. “When did you say he painted it?” She was frowning at him now, her eyes narrowed.
“A long time ago. Quentin is much older than he seems. He has lived almost a century.”
“What? That’s crazy! Why would you say such a ridiculous thing?”
“Because it’s true.”
“That’s bullshit.” She lay out five cards facedown, turned one over, then stopped, her finger poised on the figure exposed. “Look,” she said in a scornful voice. “I drew your card again. The Five of Cups. Here you are, Barnabas.”
She held up a card with a gloomy figure in a long black cape, his back turned, his head bowed in despondency. “Okay, I’ll bite. What was this painter’s name?”
“Charles Delaware Tate. The story was he slaved day and night to capture Quentin’s handsome countenance, and—in pursuing his task with such tireless commitment—he drove himself mad.”
“Hmmmm.” She did not seem interested.
“It became an obsession, an all-consuming quest for beauty to be rendered on canvas as perfectly as it existed it in life. To create as God created. It is always the artist’s dilemma, I believe.”
She seemed distracted, turned over another card, then laughed. “Of course, the Eight of Swords.” She placed it beside the caped figure and pointed to the woman surrounded by steel daggers. “There you are. Here am I. What a pair we are. The tarot is always right on.”
Barnabas grimaced at her hippie slang and made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “The tarot is a parlor game.”
“What? No. Wait a minute. Just look at her! Tied up, blindfolded, separated from the world. All those knives like a … a prison of swords.”
She threw down the deck and gave him a look of contempt. “You’re right. It’s all shit.” She paused, then asked, “So, this painting. Did he make it?”
“Yes, somehow Tate moved over to the Dark Side, and the portrait assumed magical properties. The painter discovered that objects materialized after he painted them and that he could create life with his brush alone.”
Antoinette made a sound of derision, a smack of her lips. “And you say the tarot is phony. What was this?” she said sarcastically. “Some kind of pact with the Devil?”
“Perhaps, since when he finished the portrait of Quentin, it was perfection; all who saw it were in awe of its lifelike appearance, almost as if, when one looked at it, it seemed about to speak. The eyes glistened with life and the lips hesitated just before moving.”
“That’s bizarre. But after what you’ve done to me I guess anything is possible. No wonder he wanted it back,” she said. “Where is it?”
He hesitated before he spoke. But bitterness kept him from revealing the truth.
“I don’t know.”
She became unexpectedly lively. “Are you sure? Listen. Try to remember. You don’t know how important it is. If you have any idea where it could be…”
He lied. “I have none.”
She sighed and tried to return to her reading, but she squirmed in her chair as she shuffled the cards. Barnabas remembered how envious he had been of Quentin’s looks, his charm, and his easy conquests of women. He had longed for a curse as harmless as a painting that kept one young, instead of his own cruel sentence. Antoinette looked up again, her eyes
flooded.
“Now I wish I had seen it,” she said. “It might help me to understand.”
“There’s more to his story if you are interested.”
“Sure…” When she turned over another card she became very still staring at it, and Barnabas thought she must be listening.
“Something went wrong in Quentin’s life, some tragic circumstance left him discouraged, and he ceased to be a happy man. He fell into dissolute habits, wandered into the shadowed dens of opium where he lay for days in a stupor. He ruined young girls without a crumb of concern, and then he mingled with criminals and perverts more depraved than he was. He kept his portrait hidden away, but once by chance I saw it and I was surprised by its ugliness. All the sins of debauchery that Quentin had committed were written there—the scars of knife fights over gambling debts, the tracks of needles, the yellow complexion from drugs, the hollowed eyes of hate—while he went unblemished in the world.”
Antoinette was staring at the card still in her hand. “So what you are telling me is the Quentin I loved was already a mess.”
“Yes. And he was not worthy of you.”
Her body collapsed a little and she cupped her face in her hands. “There was something cruel about him.” Barnabas could see that he had finally reached her deeper feelings.
“Still … no, I can’t believe it.” She glared at Barnabas. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because … because, my dear, the truth is, he would never have loved you as I do.” As soon as those words were out of his mouth he regretted them.
But she was not deceived. She looked at him in astonishment. “What is going on here? What are you saying? You don’t love me at all!”
“That’s not true.” He realized that he was looking into Angelique’s azure eyes and, even sunken in her gaunt face, they were so like the eyes of his old enemy.
“What is happening to me?” she cried. “Am I going to be a vampire, too?” She shuddered. “Answer me!”
“There is that possibility…”
Now she was aroused. “So is this it? Are we to be married in some way? And will you promise to stay with me forever? Will we spend—as you were so fond of saying—our lives bound together for all eternity?”
Barnabas could hear Angelique’s voice saying those words. He knew he had been tempting Antoinette, dallying with her feelings, and suddenly the true reality of their connection came forth. He hesitated to answer her. She was gaunt and sallow, her clothes filthy and her hair unwashed. In the pale light she could have been mistaken for a corpse. When he looked at her, he knew he could not make such a promise, that he was deceiving her. She was waiting for his answer, glaring at him, but he was too stupefied to speak.
She swept the cards off the table and stood up.
“Free me!” she said, suddenly taking him by surprise. “What do you want with me anyway?”
“This is where my coffin has always lain, in your house…”
A wrenching sob ripped her throat. “You do know where the painting is, don’t you?” Knocking over her chair she stared down at him. “Why won’t you tell me? Are you afraid to admit that I am still in love with Quentin?”
He was astonished at her outburst, and it pulled him out of his daze. He thought a moment, then said in a rush of guilt and pity, “I will release you. As soon as I can care for myself.” He felt relief wash over him as soon as he said the words. “It’s not too late. I promise to let you go soon. Just not yet.”
But it was not enough for her. “Then I will leave you.” She backed away from him, the cards scattering. “My daughter and I can go somewhere else. How can you bear to be with me when you know how much I despise you?”
“My dear, you must think about what you are saying. I just told you—”
“You are death!” She seemed to have acquired unusual vigor, and he realized she must be changing in a way he had dreaded. She cried out, “You fill me with contempt! And I will find a way to escape! Or I will kill you when you are asleep!” Her eyes blazed and her body quivered, stronger than before. In a flash he thought how much she resembled Angelique when she was angry, all the fire and the venom, and he realized if he were going to release her it would have to be soon.
She burst into sobs. “Look at me!” she cried. “Are you listening to me? Do you see this card? This is you! You are Death!”
There was pounding on the door upstairs, an insistent knocking, and Antoinette whipped her head around in astonishment. “Who can that be?”
“It’s late,” Barnabas said. “Will you answer it?”
She tried to collect herself. “I never have visitors. Maybe Jackie…”
The pounding resumed and Barnabas said, “Perhaps you should see who it is.” Finally exasperation, or frustration, got the better of her and she stormed for the stairs. He could just barely hear the front door opening and voices in the foyer, and he managed, with great discomfort, to pull himself up in his casket where he could listen.
It was a man’s voice, raspy and rather precise, one he failed to recognize.
“Good evening, Antoinette. I am so pleased to find you at home.”
“Who are you?” she asked, without a hint of graciousness.
“My name is Nathanial Blair. May I come in?”
“Why? What do you want?”
“Please forgive the late hour. Perhaps it is discourteous of me, but—”
“Whatever it is, I’m not interested. Come back tomorrow.”
“That would be doing you a disservice. Please, my dear, it’s important. The truth is there is a danger in the neighborhood you should be made aware of.”
“Danger? What kind?”
“I feel the doorway is not the place to impart this information. I would rather be seated in your comfortable drawing room, by the fire, perhaps with a glass of sherry.”
“You are pushy. Why should I provide that?”
Barnabas could hear the angry edge in her tone. Also, she may have been embarrassed by her disheveled state. Since she had been serving him, she had lost interest in her appearance. But he thought he heard the door close and the voices grow fainter as they made their way through the foyer. How had the stranger convinced her to admit him? Then, inexplicably, he heard her laugh.
Concerned now, Barnabas made the supreme effort and dragged himself from his coffin only to have his weakened legs give way. He could hear the tinkle of glasses in the kitchen and could once again make out their words. Whether she had given him sherry, Barnabas was not certain, but they seemed to have seated themselves in the drawing room.
“I remember this room,” Blair was saying. “I was here many times with my brother before the tragic fire and your subsequent acquisition of the property. I must say your restoration takes my breath away. It is perfectly done.”
“It’s for sale,” she said. “Are you interested?”
Blair seemed taken aback because he noisily drew in his breath. “Ah, but it is so beautiful,” he said, “so rich in detail. How could you part with it?”
“Easy,” she said. “I’m sick of living in Collinsport.”
“Well, I can understand that it might be lonely out here in the country. What is it like, two women living here by yourselves?”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t you feel the need of a man to take care of you?”
“I could easily find a man to take care of me, as you say, any time I wanted.”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
When she laughed, Barnabas though Blair might be flirting with her, as he laughed as well, but his spine stiffened when he heard the words attacked by a wild animal.
Leaning heavily on his cane, he crept closer to the stairs, clung to the doorjamb, and listened with increasing anxiety. Blair’s tone had become more serious.
“There was, just last week—I believe it was the night of the full moon—a vicious murder, the body ripped to shreds and … and eaten. The remains were unrecognizable.”
Antoi
nette gave a faint moan.
“I would, as I said, not have been suspicious of anything out of the ordinary, I mean, it could have been dogs, or coyotes, except for the fact that previous to that night other attacks of a very different nature had caught my attention. You see, I am a biologist and a physician, and I have lately begun an investigation of, well, you might call them, things that go bump in the night.” He laughed, a raspy cough in his throat, but this time Antoinette did not respond. “I am writing a book on the supernatural, you know, ghosts and monsters, creatures of ancient lore that most people feel are imaginary.”
“You mean like Frankenstein and Dracula.”
“Exactly. But those are books of fiction. My book is a scientific exploration, true to the facts.”
“I see.” She sounded interested. “And what are these attacks of a different nature?”
Barnabas began to sense that some danger was close at hand. Who was this man and what did he know? Blair answered her in a manner that made Barnabas recoil with alarm.
“I am convinced,” he said in a low voice, “that there is a vampire among us.”
“A what?”
“I’m sorry if I upset you. I know it is incredible, and difficult for you to accept, but I have examined the corpses, puncture wounds on the neck, bodies drained of blood.”
Barnabas tried to remember how many victims there had been since his transformation, not to mention Julia’s wild hunting. He had not been aware of any arousing suspicion. Who was this man and what did he want? He did not seem to be a law officer, but something more threatening. Worried what Antoinette would say, he tried to connect to her thoughts. This was clearly her chance to expose him.
“So you hope to track down this vampire?” was all she said, but there was just the hint of sarcasm in her voice. “But, why?”
“It is my intention to devote all my resources to this investigation,” Blair continued in a tone that was even more intimate, as if he and Antoinette were old friends. “For too long vampires have been the stuff of myth and legend. Are they real? I believe they are. And evil. Evil creatures that should not walk the earth. They are dead, don’t you see? But still moving among the living. Doomed to feed on the blood of others, but immortal. In truth, they do not deserve to exist, and they have harnessed some dark power for their purposes. Do you have any idea what it would mean monetarily, and in terms of my reputation as a scientist, to actually trap one, dead perhaps, but much better alive—as only they are alive—and conduct an exploration of his physiology? Imagine what I might find! The prospect is electrifying to me.”
