Lost Souls

by Poppy Brite

  Steve was interested despite himself. Anyway, a kid from the mountains was surely entitled- to his share of weird folklore. “Yeah?” he said. “What else does your grandmother know about?”

  “Lots of stuff.” The kid hesitated. “If you want to meet her, you could come visit us sometime. We live out on Burnt Church Road right by the dead end.”

  It should have been hard to extend that invitation, being the new kid with no real friends, not knowing whether Steve might just laugh at him and walk away. And it should have been difficult for Steve to accept. But already there was an easiness between them that surpassed any words they had exchanged. Standing on the path in the sun-dappled September woods staring up at the skinny kid in the tree, the kid he had not yet known for ten minutes, Steve felt comfortable, as if he could say anything. It was not quite déjà vu; it was not so unsettling, but it was somehow familiar. When he remembered it now, Steve thought that it was not so much like meeting a friend as like recognizing one.

  He loosened his grip on the steering wheel and stared ahead into the sparkling night. Christ, but he was tense—first his bad mood and the whiskey, then the spooky shit on the hill. His nerves were as tight as the thrumming of the wheels on the road. Ghost mumbled something, but when Steve glanced over at him, Ghost was still sleeping, his eyes soundly shut and his hands lying limp in his lap. He was dreaming again. Ghost always dreamed, but only sometimes did his dreams come true.

  Now they were coming into the outskirts of Missing Mile, the place called Violin Road, where dark pine branches hung over the dusty gravel road, where the land was peppered with heaps of old scrap metal and chicken coops and family graveyards that sprouted from the tired grass like sad little crops of stone. Whenever Steve drove out here in the daytime, he saw kids with ragged clothes and faded eyes playing on rickety jungle gyms, digging holes in the dirt of the scrubby yards, standing aimlessly, their heads swivelling to follow the T-bird as it went by. Once he had seen a group of small kids hunkered down around a dead possum by the side of the road, poking it and turning it over with sticks, looking for maggots. That had been a hundred-degree August day, and Steve had caught a noseful of ripe possum as he’d driven past.

  But now, under the cold September moon, the trailers and rusty cars and trash heaps seemed to fade, to grow insubstantial. Only the grass and the low-hanging trees appeared to shimmer and come alive. Steve wondered who lived here, scratching out a place to exist, holding the kudzu and the wide empty sky at bay. Were they farmers gone broke trying to beg crops from this dirt that had gone barren fifty years ago? Were they field hippies, aging bohemians who thought living off the land meant a couple of scraggly tomato plants and Dannon yogurt from the 7-Eleven two miles up the road?

  Steve glanced down at the gas gauge. Nearly empty, but the change from the Pepsi machine would buy a tankful tomorrow. The T-bird was damn thirsty these days. Piece of shit, he thought with affection.

  They were almost home now. Steve would sleep in his once-cheerful wreck of a room, swathed in filthy sheets, trying to fend off nightmares. In the morning Ghost would make whole-grain banana pancakes and bring him a beer. The presence of Ghost in the next room, drunk and dreaming, would be a comfort. It had been a long night.

  5

  Fifteen years later, Christian’s bar was not so very different than it had been on that last night of Mardi Gras, that night of blood and altars. That delicious night. One of the stained-glass windows had been broken in a fight, on a rare evening when the bar was crowded and the liquor flowed too freely and tempers reached a sodden white-hot pitch. Christian never found a replacement for the antique glass. The window was covered with black cardboard; it kept the sunlight out during the daytime, kept the shadows in at night.

  Upstairs, in Christian’s room, the bloodstains Jessy had left on the carpet grew pale brown and edgeless as Christian walked over them in black leather boots, in slippers, with his bare, long-toed, knobby feet. Fifteen years of his footsteps wore Jessy’s blood away.

  The wood of the bar lost its sheen, grew dull, scarred. Christian forgot to replace the light bulbs in the imitation Tiffany lamps—a curse of excellent night vision. The tawdry, alcoholic, glorious life of the French Quarter went on way up Chartres, far away. No one ever came in before ten.

  Later, Christian often thought that the man who called himself Wallace should have appeared at Mardi Gras. There would have been a symmetry to that, a sort of correctness. But of course life was messy, Christian had lived long enough to know that. The man came to the bar one night early in September, during a late heat wave. He had rolled up the sleeves of his white cotton shirt, and the cloth at his armpits was circled with sweat. At first Christian thought he was an old man, by the usual standards at any rate, a very old, sad, tired man. Then he looked again and saw that the man could not be much older than fifty.

  But this was a man who carried himself as if expecting blows, a man turned inward, looking out at the world through guarded eyes. His clipped curly hair was only beginning to go from brown to gray. He had a face that might once have been kind—deep careworn lines, brown eyes that had seen too much pain. There was still warmth in those eyes, but it was warmth dampened with weariness and watchfulness. Christian thought that whatever this man chose to drink, he would take it straight, and he would take a lot of it.

  “Scotch,” said the man. “Chivas Regal.” Christian poured it over ice. The man held the glass up to the light, frowned into its amber depths. Then he brought it to his lips and tossed the whiskey down in one practiced motion. Christian heard the ice chitter against the man’s teeth. The man spat it back into the glass. Then he looked at Christian and said, “My name is Wallace Creech,” and held out his hand.

  “Christian,” said Christian, taking the hand. He looked straight into Wallace’s eyes. Wallace stared back, unflinching. Most people started at the touch of Christian’s fingers and withdrew quickly, rubbing their hands against their clothing to rid themselves of Christian’s icy touch, glancing away from the cold light of Christian’s eyes. But Wallace looked steadily back, grasped Christian’s hand harder, and said, “A fine name.”

  Only then did Christian notice the small silver crucifix that hung on a chain around Wallace’s neck, glinting in the dim light of the bar. “I’m afraid I’m not,” Christian told him.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I don’t belong to a church. I’m not religious.” It is possible to live too long for such comforts, Christian thought.

  “Ah,” said Wallace knowingly. Christian expected him to reach into his pocket for a tract. Over the years, Christian had been given hundreds of them and had found hundreds more left on the tables, or under them. Everything from the smudgily printed, misspelled credo of a snake-handling cult from the Louisiana swamps to a lurid pamphlet called Rock Music Is Worse than LSD! Christian was curious as to what drew people to these religions; their obsession with their own mortality intrigued him, and he read all the tracts.

  But Wallace didn’t offer him a tract. Instead, he changed the subject abruptly, asking, “Have you had this place long?”

  Christian felt a touch of shame. He had misjudged the old man. From the looks of him, Wallace needed all the faith he could muster. The pain seemed to pour from him. He must be lonely, just trying to make conversation, and talk was part of a bartender’s job.

  “Twenty years,” Christian told him.

  “You must have been a very young man when you opened it.”

  “I am older than I look,” said Christian, smiling slightly. His face had not changed, had grown no older, had lost none of its narrow cold beauty since the last night of Mardi Gras fifteen years ago, the night he had slept in the arms of Molochai, his belly heavy and warm with Molochai’s blood. Christian had not aged for a very long time.

  “So I gather,” said Wallace dryly.

  Christian paused, looking into Wallace’s face. Wallace’s expression was no different than before; the eyes were the same, the h
urt, frowning eyes, the lines bracketing the mouth as weary and patient as before. Christian dismissed the remark as meaningless—the man only wanted someone to talk to. He was lonely. Religious people always seemed lonely; perhaps that explained their need to be among great crowds of people who believed as they did. Such a great comfort, to be among others of your kind, and such loneliness when there were none. How could humans ever believe themselves truly lonely when there were so many of them?

  “Another drink?” Christian asked.

  Wallace tossed back a second shot of Chivas, then surprised Christian by asking, “Is business always this slow?” Then, realizing what he had said, he tried to apologize. “I didn’t mean to be rude—I was only curious. It’s a nice place, a good location, the French Quarter—”

  The man was babbling, and Christian realized that for some reason Wallace Creech was terrified. The empty glass in his hand rattled against the bar; the ice made cold little chinking sounds. The man seemed on the point of bolting.

  Christian dumped the melting ice cubes, scooped in fresh ones, poured another shot. This one was a double, but he watched Wallace put it away with the same practiced motion, not even grimacing. Here was a seasoned drinker.

  “Why are you here, Wallace Creech?” Christian asked softly. “What do you want?”

  Wallace’s hand went to the cross at his throat. Then, as if trying to conceal the gesture, he ran a finger around the inside of his collar, loosening it, though the top button was already undone. “There was a girl, once,” he said. “Jessy. Small, thin. Short brown hair. Black dress. She used to come here.”

  Christian felt a cold fist squeeze shut somewhere deep inside him. The fist twisted, clenched; it was wrapped around some vital part of him, tearing him loose inside. He licked his lips. His mouth tasted of sour blood. He pretended to think. “Jessy,” he said. “Jessy. Such a long time ago … but perhaps I remember. She stopped coming in fifteen years ago.”

  “Was that after Mardi Gras … fifteen years ago?”

  “I think so,” said Christian, and tasted the sour blood again.

  “She was my daughter,” said Wallace.

  Christian swallowed. He was suddenly thirsty. “And she just disappeared?” he asked. “Didn’t you call the police?”

  “I didn’t, no. Jessy was wild.” For a moment Wallace’s face was a Mardi Gras mask of tragedy; then he put his hand over his eyes, frowned his tears away, and went on. “She was forever threatening to leave home, saying I didn’t give her enough money, saying I was dull. She liked to go out and drink. She was angry because I made her continue with school when she wanted to drop out. She didn’t seem to care about anything … certainly not her father.”

  Wallace covered his eyes again. “A girl needs her mother, I think, and Lydia—my wife—died when Jessy was only five. Suicide, a sin. I brought our daughter up myself, and did a poor job, I suppose. When Jessy disappeared, I thought she had run off with a boy. I hoped she would come back when his money was gone. She had such strange notions … such very strange notions … and sending the police after her would have made her hate me.”

  “Why are you here now?” Christian couldn’t look at Wallace’s eyes. He stared at the silver cross, at the soft loose skin of the man’s throat behind it.

  “Well … after Jessy left, I moved all her things to the attic. When I realized she wasn’t coming back, I hated to look at them. Recently I happened to think of them, and I wondered whether her old clothes might be good enough to give to my church group. They hold a yearly bazaar for the poor, you know.” Christian nodded. “While I was going through the boxes, I found an old diary. The entries mentioned you several times—and your bar. She seemed to have … feelings for you. I thought she might have told you where she was going. I’d so love to see her now.”

  “I don’t know,” said Christian. “She only drank here. She didn’t talk to me. I’ve no idea where she went.” He realized that he was still staring at the crucifix and dropped his gaze to Wallace’s empty glass.

  Wallace gave a heavy sigh. “I’ll have another,” he said. He stayed to drink two more whiskeys, getting drunker, wandering around the bar. He examined the stained-glass window and its blind twin, the tables scarred with cryptic patterns of initials and beer-rings, the worn crimson leather of the bar stools. From time to time he glanced back at Christian, who silently avoided his eyes.

  When Wallace began staring at the door that led to the staircase and, beyond that, to Christian’s room, Christian picked up his rag and started wiping down the bar. “I’m closing up. I’m sorry I couldn’t help you with your problem.” His voice was sharper than he had meant it to be.

  When Wallace was gone—he left with a quiet, swaying dignity—and the door locked after him, Christian turned to his rows of bottles and found a squat embossed bottle nearly full of luminous green liqueur. No one wanted Chartreuse, not anymore, but Christian always kept a few bottles of it in case Molochai, Twig, and Zillah came rolling into town some Mardi Gras night. They would want Chartreuse, Christian knew. Tonight he wanted it too. He wanted the swirling heaviness of alcohol to weigh his mind down, wanted to sleep deep and dreamlessly, with no phantoms to swim out of the recesses of memory, no thin little girls with shadowed eyes and thighs bloody from murderous, innocent birth.

  Could he?

  Christian uncapped the bottle and started to pour himself a shot. His hand paused over the glass, bony and white, cold on the cold bottle. He smelled the liqueur. A scent as fresh as the new night, as birth. The smell of altars. He wanted so badly to be drunk, to sleep. The others—Molochai, Twig, and Zillah—drank incessantly, even ate; they drowned their true natures in gluttony. But they were young. They were of a newer generation. Their chemistry was subtly different; they were hardier, their organs perhaps more thick-walled, less delicate. Christian remembered the time he had drunk wine, the time he had drunk vodka, and the memory of pain shivered up his spine. But perhaps this …

  Christian clutched the bottle to his chest and carried it up the stairs with him, turning off the bar lights as he went, ascending in the dark. A blessing of excellent night vision.

  The Chartreuse burned going down, and Christian sat tensed in the dark, waiting for pain. But when the liqueur hit his belly, a gentle green fire began to spread through him. It was going to work this time. His strange, treacherous body was going to let him get drunk as he had never been before, and he would rest; for a time he would not have to think.

  He poured himself another shot and tried to sip it. It stung his eyes and went up his nose, and he threw it back and swallowed hard to keep from coughing. He laughed quietly at himself. He was a good bartender, an excellent bartender, but he certainly did not know how to drink. After the next shot he dispensed with the glass altogether, swigging out of the bottle as he had seen the others do on that Mardi Gras night.

  When the first noise floated up from the alley, Christian was drunk enough to ignore it. It was only a bump. But then there was another bump and a scraping clatter that hurt to hear, as if someone were dragging one of the metal garbage cans across the concrete. A stray dog? A bum? Christian crept to his window, which gave him a clear view of the alley and a slice of Royal Street beyond it. He cupped his hands to the glass and looked out.

  Apparently Wallace Creech was still drunk too. Nothing else could account for the clumsiness with which he was going through Christian’s garbage, mostly empties from the bar. As Christian watched, Wallace let a Taaka vodka bottle slip from his hands. It shattered on the concrete, and Wallace went down on his hands and knees, trying futilely to scoop the glass up, to dump it back into the torn garbage bag.

  This was too much. Wallace Creech would have to be dealt with more harshly. The alley was already strewn with broken glass, wrinkled paper bags, and other trash, but what was Wallace looking for? His daughter’s bones, picked clean and wrapped in a Times-Picayune fifteen years out of date?

  Christian straightened and turned away from the win
dow. He would go down and slip into the alley; he would bend that dry old neck back, let flow the old man’s tasteless blood—

  The first spasm hit him as he was opening the door to the landing. It bent him nearly double. He leaned against the jamb, clutching himself, trying to hold in the blaze of green agony that was burning its way through his belly. This was worse than the other times, so much worse; surely the pain must be ripping him apart inside, webbing his innards with tiny bloody holes. His eyes squeezed shut, and a long shudder ran through him.

  Christian moaned and twisted his head, clenching his teeth, trying not to scream. He had to get to the bathroom: it was out on the landing, shared by the other apartments on the top floor of the building. He pushed at the door. It swung fully open, and Christian fell onto the landing, clumsy and agonized, his throat bitter, his eyes hot and streaming.

  “Jesus, man, Jesus. Are you all right?” His neighbor, David, was just going out. Christian rolled onto his back and looked helplessly up at David, the drop-dead suit, the hair kept pathologically short, the sunglasses he always wore, even at night. Another spasm of pain washed over him, incredibly worse than the last, and he curled around himself and whined deep in his throat. Surely the tissues of his body were burning away, dissolving inside.

  Then he was aware of David’s hands under his arms, David helping him up, half dragging him to the bathroom where he bent Christian over the toilet. Something deep in Christian loosened, and all the Chartreuse came up—green, hot, churned into a foamy mass now. Christian sobbed at the sight of it and turned his head away. Thick strings of saliva webbed his lips.

  “Jesus, barkeep, are you going to live? Have to close up early tonight?”

  Christian managed to nod. He leaned against David. The warm pressure of David’s hand on his shoulder kept him from collapsing. He vomited again, having to force it this time. After that, he felt almost good. “I’m going out,” he told David.