Gypsy Blood

by Vernon, Steve

  Carnival should have seen it. He should have seen it in her pallor, in the laser like clarity of her gaze, in the lividity of her gums. He should have seen her for what she was but he settled for a cheap laugh.

  “Enter freely and of your own will,” He said with a winning grin and an Errol Flynn bow, inviting the vampire into his house.

  Now you’ve done it boy. Now you’ve done it for sure.

  Poppa was right.

  The vampire stepped into Carnival’s shop, freely and of her own will, and Carnival’s bad day just got rolled into worse.

  Chapter 4

  Nice Night for a Bite

  Carnival hadn’t seen that many vampires in his short Rom life. He was curious, so he invited her in.

  Liar. She’s another pair of pretty eyes that you think you can save.

  Poppa was right .

  The truth was he was just plain curious – so he invited her in.

  More fool him.

  Carnival was a sucker when it came to women in need. Momma should have named him Galahad.

  Ha. She should have called you Jacob. What I told her to call you. Jacob who plotted with his mother to steal from his father. Jacob, the disappointment. Instead, she named you after that movie star. That he-slut in eye shadow. She named you…

  Shut up, Poppa.

  Carnival felt a flush of anger washing over him like a flash fire. He focused his bitterness on the vampire.

  “So what do you want?” he asked. “To drink my blood? It’s pretty thin.”

  “I want to know my future,” she said. “Palm or cards. I don’t care which. Just tell me what you see.”

  Carnival gave her his best all knowing nod.

  Poppa laughed inside Carnival’s chest, a desperate hyena chortling in a thick meat sack.

  Oh my boy, she’s shit wiser turds than you. This one will swallow you whole.

  Maybe, Carnival thought, but the last one couldn’t.

  “Depends on what you want to know,” he said. “The palm tells everything. Birth to death, cradle to coffin. Only general, you know? Cards are specific but shortsighted. Two or three months at best. Cards don’t see far, just straight.”

  “I don’t care about months,” she said. “Months and days, minutes and seconds; it’s all the same to me. I stopped thinking about time a long time ago. It had better be the palm.”

  “Sit down.”

  They sat at the card table he’d found at a junk shop three blocks into the dirtier side of town. The table was covered with a black cotton tablecloth, sewn by an old lady in exchange for a dream he read. He told her the dream meant her son was coming home from overseas.

  Vinegar tongue. You lied to the old woman. You lie to all women.

  Actually he hadn’t. The boy came home in a long wooden box. Carnival had told the truth. Then he nailed the tablecloth to the table before she found out what kind of truth he’d told her.

  That’s my boy. Truthful, practical, and handy with a hammer. You should have been a carpenter. You crucify so beautifully.

  “Did you get that in a fight?” she pointed at the scar - long and red and tapering like a long red scarf across the right side of his cheek.

  “Heidelberg dueling accident,” he said. “I thrust when I should have parried. Please sit. The green in the chair is good for your chakra.”

  She smiled.

  “The wooden chair is more comfortable, isn’t it?”

  Like X-ray, boy. This one is trouble. She sees through each of your lies.

  Carnival shrugged. He knew Poppa wasn’t lying.

  “Do you have a name?” Carnival asked.

  “Do you need one?”

  “Names are handy.”

  “Names are handles,” she corrected. “People use them to push you around.”

  Ha! Listen to this one talk. You’re nothing but a window to her, boy. She sees straight through you.

  Carnival did his best to ignore Poppa’s taunting.

  “Handles,” he said to her. “I’ll remember that. Maybe get it stitched in needlepoint.”

  “You can call me Maya.”

  He could tell that she was lying. It didn’t matter. A lot of customers didn’t like to tell him things too close to the truth. It was a sort of mutual con game that way.

  “Maya it is. Are you right handed or left?”

  “Does it matter?”

  He shrugged. He had a pretty good shrug. He practiced in front of a mirror any chance he got, usually whenever he was considering any kind of self improvement.

  “That depends. Old time palmists only read left hands. Closest to the heart was supposed to tell truth, you know?”

  Bullshit. The heart is the biggest liar ever. You see a pretty vampire, you will say anything.

  Poppa laughed rudely. Carnival was glad Maya couldn’t hear.

  She will eat you, boy. And not in a good way.

  “What if I’m ambidextrous?”

  “Then you ought to make up your mind.”

  She grinned. Carnival liked the look of a woman’s grin, especially when it pointed at something he’d said. Only Maya’s grin made him nervous. It made him feel like he was a freshly skinned cat flung headfirst into an underfed dog pound.

  You ought to be nervous. This one could drain you like a ruptured pustule.

  “I’m right handed,” she said.

  “Then give me your right.”

  Ha!

  Carnival could be contrary if he wanted to be. “You’re receptive. Like a radar dish to life, you take what’s given. You lap it up like a cat laps cream.”

  The shape of her palm and her splayed out fingers, told him this. That and a pretty good guess. Another grin told him that he’d guessed right. Her grin didn’t look right but he hadn’t seen that many vampire grins. Her mouth was like last night’s succubus. Like she could open her mouth and suck him in.

  Be afraid, boy. Be very afraid.

  Poppa watched too many movies, Carnival thought. Carnival was scared but he really wanted to know what a vampire’s palm looked like so he dealt with his fear. He sent his fear to stand in the corner of his soul.

  Ha. Mister fearless. Tattered down rag-a-bed Galahad. There are skid marks on your shining metal britches, boy, and it isn’t rust.

  Carnival held her hand, testing it for flex. A stiff hand meant an inflexible person, allergic to change. Her hand was cold. He felt a chill creep through his bones like a rat through a sewer pipe. He should have stopped right there. He was in deep water and should have swum for the shore. But he didn’t.

  He checked her lifeline, the line that fish-hooked between a person’s thumb and index finger down towards the wrist. Long and strong meant a good healthy life. Too many angles meant a tendency towards stiff joints and trouble with endurance, spiritual and otherwise. If the lifeline tucked in close to the thumb it spoke of a traditional life. If it bent away from her thumb and headed across the palm, it showed a wild spirited black sheep.

  You’ve seen no line like this one, boy.

  Poppa was right. This line wasn’t like any Carnival had seen before. It was a crazy spiral, a long skinny worm wrapped around her thumb. Round and round like a string she’d tied on to not forget. Like one of those spinning hypnotic discs you used to find in the back of comic books, right next to the garlic chewing gum and the shrunken heads. You know the ones. They were supposed to allow you to hypnotize women into doing whatever you wanted.

  That disc you ordered, it never worked, did it boy?

  Carnival hung his head. Poppa still wasn’t telling any lies.

  “What do you see?” Maya asked

  What did he see? Christ and all his singing saints, tap dancing on a straight pin. He tried to swallow. His tongue swelled up like a waterlogged couch in a toxic landfill.

  “What do you see?”

  The desperation in her voice told him this wasn’t just for fun. This meant a lot to her. She needed to know. The Galahad in Carnival’s soul responded to her need. He swallow
ed the couch inside of his throat and did his best to find a believable voice.

  “I see a long life. A very long life.”

  “What else do you see?”

  What could he tell her? Her lifeline swallowed everything. Heart, head, fate. All gone in a single gulp.

  “I see hunger. A life of endless hunger.”

  She cleared her throat, like she’d just tasted something she didn’t like. Carnival knew the feeling.

  “What about happiness? What about children? What about marriage?”

  There were tears in her voice. He was surprised. He hadn’t imagined vampires would have that kind of feeling.

  Ha! Comes the dawn, slow but sure. You should have listened to your Poppa. I warned you not to invite her in. She is a night walker. Hungrier than lawyers. Greedier than churches. A vampire and you let her in. Now you’ve got feelings for her. Next you’ll want to help her.

  Carnival touched the lifeline, gently, like he’d touch a land mine.

  “Damn!”

  The line snagged at his skin, like teeth. Like some kind of reverse hookworm.

  What did you expect, Val my boy? Verdelak. Nosferatu. Yorga, Barnabas Collins, and Christopher Lee. A mullo. A vampire. Same as a ghost, only hungrier.

  Carnival held his ground, refusing to give way to his fear. He pulled his finger back. The flesh puckered and stuck, like living Velcro. He looked at his fingertip. A small red blood blister. He was in deep shit.

  From your lips to God’s rear, boy. Suck it up and take your punishment.

  “What about love?” Maya asked.

  What was she asking him for? Right now he was too scared to think. He forced himself to concentrate.

  “What about it? You might as well ask which way the wind will blow, three hundred years from tomorrow. It’s late. Go home. See me in the morning.”

  It was worth a try.

  “Tomorrow’s too late,” she said. “What about my future?”

  “Future is all you got. Future, past and hunger. Lots of hunger.”

  She looked hungry, too. She eyed him like he was a freshly sizzled tavern steak.

  You said a mouthful, boy.

  “Shut up, Poppa.”

  Maya looked confused. “Who are you talking to?”

  She looked closer, like she was studying Carnival’s soul. And maybe she was.

  “Ah,” she said. “I see.”

  And then she reached out and touched Carnival directly in the center of his chest and all at once Poppa stopped talking.

  “That’s better,” she said.

  Carnival couldn’t believe it. She’d shut Poppa up. That took strong magic. Now he was really scared. Maya smiled at him, showing her teeth.

  “How about a quick little drink?” she asked.

  Carnival didn’t need a picture to figure this out. She was thirsty and to her, right now, he looked like nothing but a fresh glass of tomato juice.

  The vampire moved closer.

  What in the hell would Wesley Snipes do? He had to float like Van Helsing and sting like Buffy. He stood up quickly, kicking the wooden chair over behind him. He brought his boot down hard on the rungs as the chair hit the ground. The chair rungs shattered. He was glad they did. He would have looked pretty foolish, step dancing on a chair that wouldn’t break.

  Maya didn’t seem worried, watching him like a patient diner waiting for dessert. He scooped up a broken chair rung and pointed it at her like a knife. As he squeezed the polished wooden grain of the rung an unexpected memory jumped out of the shadows and mugged him. He remembered standing this way in another place, hanging onto another wooden chair rung. He remembered Momma hanging on to the other end of the chair. She was dying and where was Poppa?

  Carnival yanked himself back to reality. There was no time for swimming in the sea of memories. “Get back vampire. There is no future for you tonight.”

  Maya looked down at the chair rung. One eyebrow shot up like a short black sunrise. Her expression reeked of undead disdain. He had that effect on most women.

  “Not sharp enough,” she said. “If you’re going to stick me it’s got to be sharper.”

  He wished for the time to unsnap his pocket knife and whittle a point, but wishing, like his stake, was pointless.

  Maya held up her palm, like a Native American Indian in a bad cowboy movie. Carnival watched her palm. Suddenly she was Mandrake, Svengali and Kreskin rolled into one. He didn’t want to look but he had to. He stared at her palm. It was like staring at a whirlpool in an ocean. It was like falling headfirst into a canyon full of naked want.

  Somewhere down there in the heart of the vision, Carnival saw Poppa.

  Poppa was covered in worms and maggots. He looked like an explosion in a noodle factory. The long red scarf tangled at his feet like a snare. He had his arms opened wide. It looked like he was trapped. Carnival couldn’t believe his inner eye. He didn’t think anyone was strong enough to trap his Poppa.

  Help me boy. The memories are drowning me.

  Was this real, illusion, or a dream? None of it mattered one bit. Carnival grabbed Poppa, trying to yank him free. He felt the line wrap about himself, inside himself. He felt it tightening. He felt like Tarzan wrestling the mother of all boa constrictors. Only this was colder than any mere snake. Cold and dead and hungry. He felt it sucking, drawing him inwards, amoebic hunger, like one of those creeping vines that can strangle full grown sunflowers.

  That’s the truth. Forget about movies. Forget about fangs. Vampires, the real ones, they never bite. Not at first. They sucked. We’re talking death by osmosis. There was just one hope. Carnival pulled free of the dream vision. He reached down through the endless line and grabbed at the broken chair wreckage. He rose up, clinging to a pair of chair rungs like a drowning man clinging to a couple of drifting match sticks. He crossed the rungs, holding them outwards. He tried to think of Van Helsing. The Pope. Mother Theresa, Billy Graham, and Evil Knievel.

  Pray, boy!

  Poppa was right. Carnival recited the one rosary prayer he remembered.

  “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth; I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was crucified, died, and was buried.”

  Some of the lines were wrong but he must have been doing something right. The lifeline loosened. Carnival felt a kind of hope being born. Maybe he would make it.

  He kept on praying.

  “He descended into hell and on the third day He rose from the dead, ascended to heaven and sits at the right hand of God.”

  Damn. He couldn’t remember the last of it, something about communion and resurrection. Not that good of a thing to be praying for, given what he was facing.

  Keep praying!

  He tried another prayer. One his uncle told him to use when the bullies gave him grief.

  “Saint Michael the Archangel defend us in our day of battle; protect us against the deceit and wickedness of the devil. May God rebuke him we humbly pray.”

  St. Michael did the trick. Just that quickly Carnival was free, cowering behind the refuge of an overturned card table, brandishing a makeshift crucifix in the face of a hungry she-devil.

  Pray boy. Open your eyes and pray.

  Carnival kept on praying, falling back on the Lord’s Prayer like a blind man toppling into the heart of the world’s darkest mosh pit.

  “Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.”

  She swatted the card table out of the way. The part of Carnival’s mind closest to his wallet mourned the loss of a perfectly good card table and chairs. The sensible part just kept on praying.

  “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done…”

  She laughed the kind of laugh that crows laugh over unpicked bones.

  “…as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread…”

  She swatted the Tim Allen cross from his hands. Carnival swallowed hard. The bottom fell out of his hope. He felt his daily bread grow slowly moldy.

  Damn you boy
, pray!

  Carnival made a cross with his fingers. For an instant he thought about chanting “The power of Christ compels you, the power of Christ compels you,” but he figured she probably wasn’t much of a movie fan. She caught Carnival by the throat. She held him close enough to smell the stink of the graveyard dirt she’d slept beneath.

  “My people are older than your people,” she said in a voice that sounded like a toad that had somehow learned to speak. “Older than His people.”

  He was terrified, but he tried not to show it.

  He did pretty well.

  He managed not to soil his pants.

  “…our father, our father…”

  He isn’t listening. Neither am I.

  Maya kept squeezing, choking Carnival out. Laughing flash bulbs splashed on and off before his eyes. “Little gypsy boy. You mouth your prayers, yet you haven’t stood beneath a cross in more years than you will admit.”

  It was true. He hadn’t been to church since Christ wore short pants.

  “Your words are wind; smoke that slips from the chimney I will make of your open throat.”

  She squeezed harder. He felt his blood quiver in his veins, aching to be sucked clean.

  “Holy Mary, mother of….” he wheezed.

  She shook him like a broken baby rattle and threw him to the floor. He lay there face first, staring down at a tarot card that had fallen when she upended the card table. The card called the hanged man.

  A card of untapped potential. Untouchable power. Sacrifice.

  Strangely enough, he didn’t feel comforted.

  “I spit on your Christian Mary,” the vampire said. “I spit on your mother.”

  That did it, more than anything else. Nobody insulted Momma. Carnival stared at the hanged man and thought of Momma hanging onto her death-chair. As the she-demon picked him up he found the strength to speak.

  “Vampire,” he said, spitting the word like a swallow of bad mouthwash. “You mock me. You say my words are empty. Yet only last week I slept with a gypsy girl whose piss was warmer than what passes for your pitiful blood. Her laugh was a gift from heaven. Her heart beat like a thunder of roses. You have nothing to match her.”