Lost Souls

by Poppy Brite

  He had drunk from the bottle of blood without choking, without spitting or gagging. To the contrary—the blood had seemed to revive him, freshen his skin, brighten his eyes.

  Most hitchhikers were glad enough to party with them, to share a pipe or a tab of acid or a tumble on the mattress. Then—always after these pleasures, for it made their blood sweeter—the wine bottle was brought out. Or the whiskey bottle, or whatever they had put the latest batch in. This was Molochai and Twig’s favorite part: the hitchhiker, already drunk or high or fried on acid, would swig eagerly from the bottle. Then his eyes—or her eyes—would grow big and frightened, and his mouth—or her mouth—would twist in terror and disgust as the blood drooled back out of it, and Molochai, Twig, and Zillah would be upon him. Or her. One rescuing the wine bottle, one holding the hitchhiker’s panicked hands, and one at the throat. The sweet, rended, pulsing throat. Or the belly. Or the crotch. Anywhere would do, any spot that would bleed.

  But none of that had happened with this boy—Nothing. Where had he come by such a name? And where had he come by a taste for blood? Again Zillah studied the clear sleeping face, the dark fringe of hair that fell across the eyes. This one could stay around for a few days. There was magic in his bloodstream, surely, but maybe a sort of magic that should be saved for a while. With the tip of his finger he touched Nothing’s lips. And in his sleep, Nothing smiled.

  The birth of morning found them all heaped on the mattress, tangled, hair across faces, hearts to backbones, hands clutching hands. Zillah stirred and muttered as the first light touched his eyelids—the last ancestral vestige of a reflex he scarcely remembered, even in his nightmares. He pressed his mouth against Nothing’s throat. Then he came half-awake and, remembering that he had decided to keep this boy, did not bite but had to suck like a baby before he could sleep.

  16

  Steve had awakened with a hellacious hangover. This was no rare occurrence for him—usually he could sleep it off or chew Excedrin until he felt better—but today’s was a real bulldog, tenacious and ugly, with pounds of power in its drooling jaws.

  Now Ghost was trying to talk to him. The guy had some nerve. Steve glowered across the kitchen table. “You want to go where?”

  “Miz Catlin’s. You remember her, my grandmother’s friend? She has her own store now. It’s out on Forty-two toward Corinth. Just down the road, west.”

  “West,” said Steve stupidly. He poked at his banana pancakes, then sipped the beer Ghost had given him. Hair of the dog, he told himself. Hair of the dog that bit me. Who says there aren’t nerves in the brain? He pressed his hands to his temples, winced, lifted the beer again. That was all the exercise he planned on getting this morning. “What do you want to go out there for?”

  “She makes herb remedies. I want to get some balm of angelica.” Ghost shovelled in a forkful of pancake, licked honey off his lips. “I got a wisdom tooth coming in.”

  “I’ll take you down to the 7-Eleven. You can get a bottle of Tylenol.”

  Ghost pulled his hair in front of his face and looked disdainful. “That’s no good. I can’t use any of that stuff—it makes me sick. Come on, you ought to get out of the house.”

  “Where is this place again?”

  “West,” said Ghost patiently. “You know. Like California, only not as far.”

  Steve lifted his middle finger, but the effort was too much for him, and he took another swig of beer. “I’m supposed to go to work at four.”

  “We’ll be back by then. Come on, Steve. It might not be warm much longer.”

  Steve cast a suspicious look at Ghost. “You drank as much as I did. How come you don’t have a hangover?”

  Ghost smiled. “Miz Catlin gave me a potion. Want some?”

  One of the four roads that led out of Missing Mile, Firehouse Street, crossed N.C. 42 a ways out of town. Steve turned the T-bird onto the highway and leaned out the window, letting the wind rush past his face. The air smelled of the long sweet death of summer and the gaudy return of autumn. Dandelions, creekwater, woodsmoke from an early bonfire. Steve breathed them all in.

  He felt better now, had felt better ever since Ghost made him drink some bittersweet anise-flavored liquid from a tiny blue bottle. Steve had heard all the arguments against herbal medicine—it was dangerous, it was inaccurate, it was better left to real scientists with real Ph.D.’s—but growing up around Ghost and Miz Deliverance, he had seen folk remedies in action a hundred times over. They could be a damn sight more powerful than anything available at the local pharmacy.

  Ghost had dug an old five-stringed guitar out of the T-bird’s trunk. He sprawled in the backseat strumming random chords that sounded like crystal being smashed by a rusty hammer, singing as loud as he could over the wind and the hum of the tires on the road. “Sold in the market down in New Orleeeeens … I bet your momma was a voodoo queen … owhoooo, how come you dance so gooood?”

  Ghost’s voice always reminded Steve of Hank Williams before the speed and the whiskey got him, and in it Steve thought he could hear the beat of dusky blood and the roar of the Mississippi. But he only said, “That’s not how that song goes.”

  Under Ghost’s enthusiastic fingers, the guitar strings protested, then succumbed and sang their cacophonous song. The G-string pinged out a tiny death knell as it snapped. Ghost sang more softly, mourning it. In the front seat Steve grinned, shook his head, and pushed the speed up a notch. The sun was warm, and the road rose and fell smoothly away, and they almost drove past the place before Ghost stopped playing and said, “That’s it!”

  Steve slowed, looked around. “Where?”

  Ghost pointed at a little house set back from the road. It was painted green and sat on a big lawn still speckled yellow and white with late dandelions. Out back, Steve thought he saw the gleam of a pond. Sure enough, as he watched, a fat white goose came around the house and marched up the porch steps. At the end of the driveway, a carefully stencilled sign read: CATLIN’S COUNTRY STORE. PICKLES, PIES, PRESERVES. CLOSED SUNDAYS

  “No way,” said Steve.

  “Sure, this is it. Go on up the drive.”

  Steve twisted around to look at Ghost. “You’re tryin’ to tell me a witch owns this place?”

  Ghost looked hurt. “Miz Catlin’s not a witch. She was friends with my grandmother. You think my grandmother was a witch?”

  Steve remained tactfully silent.

  Ghost scowled. “Well, anyway. Miz Catlin just knows about medicine, that’s all.”

  Steve maneuvered the T-bird into a wide circle of gravel at the top of the driveway, trying not to run over any of the chrysanthemums that nodded in the sun behind a tiny white picket fence. As he got out, another goose pecked at the toe of his boot, then flapped up onto the hood of the car and fixed him with a baleful eye.

  “Stare at him,” Ghost said. “They won’t bite you if you keep staring at them.”

  Steve backed away. “They bite?”

  “Not really. They hiss at you, mostly. The only time geese are ever dangerous is when you happen to be standing on the edge of a cliff. I heard about a guy who almost got killed that way.”

  “By geese?”

  “Yeah, there was a whole flock of them coming after him. All hissing and cackling and stabbing at his ankles with their big ol’ beaks. He didn’t know you had to stare them right in the eye, and he panicked. They backed him right over a fifty-foot cliff.”

  “So how come he didn’t die?”

  “This guy had wings,” said Ghost. “He flew away.”

  Steve sighed with the air of one long-suffering but patient.

  “Miz Catlin?” Ghost said, putting his head around the screen door. “You here, Miz Catlin?”

  “GHOST-CHILD!”

  A tiny old lady came barrelling out of the store’s dimness and launched herself into Ghost’s outstretched arms. Ghost lifted her off the floor and hugged her hard, knocking her big flowered hat off. Steve picked it up and held it awkwardly until Miz Catlin’s little sn
eakered feet were on the floor again.

  She adjusted the hat over her long gray hair, smiling up at Ghost. “How the hell did you ever get so big, child? You grow another inch every time I see you.” She turned to Steve. “I was there when this kid saw his first light. My sister Lexy delivered him. I gave his mama a spoonful of motherwort in wine, but there weren’t no need. He was the easiest baby I ever seen. Once I pulled his caul off, he just laid there and watched us all with them holy blue eyes. I gave him a decoction of pomegranate rind for the runs once. Ate too many of my fresh green apples and couldn’t stay off the pot for ten minutes at a time. He weren’t but this high.” Miz Catlin held her hand a couple of feet off the floor.

  The little lady herself wasn’t much taller; the top of her flowered hat reached about to Steve’s rib cage. Steve thought he remembered hearing this story before, but he smiled at Miz Catlin. Ghost was studying the ceiling, the rose-and-vine-patterned wallpaper, the jars of bright penny candy on the shelves. He saw Steve looking at him and scuffed his toe on the wooden floor.

  Miz Catlin disengaged herself from Ghost’s arms. “You and your good-looking friend just come out to brighten up an old lady’s day, or you need some medicine?”

  “It’s my wisdom teeth.”

  “O Lord. Let me see ’em.” She peered into Ghost’s mouth, prodded his gums with a wrinkled forefinger. “You’re lucky. Got a big mouth. You won’t have to get ’em pulled. I’ll make up that balm directly. You want to poke around in the back room like you used to?”

  A crazy light came into Ghost’s eyes. “Shit, yeah! Steve, wait till you see what’s back there.”

  Miz Catlin’s dried-apple face registered astonishment. “This isn’t Steve? That skinny kid who used to hang around with you all the time? Well, age surely made you handsome, Mister Steve Finn.” The old lady stared at Steve with such frankness that he wanted to look away, but he thought that might be rude. Finally Miz Catlin giggled like a little girl and waved her hand at them. “Listen to me—I never could give up flirtin’. Anyway, you kids take a good look back there.” She indicated the contents of the front room: baskets of hand-dipped candles, patchwork quilts, potpourris. “All this stuff, it’s for the tourists. Back in the back—that’s my real stock. Ghost’ll show you. He knows.”

  After the white-painted, sun-dappled walls of the front room, the back of the store seemed dark, the air heavy and oppressive. There was a scent of dry antiseptic dust, of strange oily spirits. Of herbs. As Steve’s eyes got used to the light, he realized that he and Ghost were standing in a room lined with thousands of small boxes and bottles. There were shelves crammed with them, tall glass-fronted cabinets displaying them, open drawers stuffed with them.

  “It’s all medicine,” Ghost said with reverence. “Antique patent medicine. New ones, too. Herb remedies. The stock of a hundred old-time pharmacies. Miz Catlin’s got it all right here.” He stood in the middle of the room swaying gently from side to side, seeming to take in the essence of the place. His hands hung limp at his sides.

  Soon Ghost’s eyes seemed to go transparent. Steve thought that if he looked close enough he could see all the way through to the whorls of Ghost’s brain, to the vaulted chamber of Ghost’s skull. The first time Steve had seen his friend go into this state, when they were kids, it had alarmed him. He thought he was either watching the start of an epileptic fit or Ghost was about to die on him. Now he was used to it. Ghost was just getting real heavy into some mind-groove, as their friend Terry might have put it. Other people thought hard, sometimes, but Ghost tranced out. Steve watched him for a moment, then shrugged and started exploring the room.

  He found big brown bottles with murky contents gone to powder, little bottles of heavy blue and green glass, cardboard boxes whose corners had gone softly ragged with age, their colors sifting down to the dusty wooden floor to mingle with the cobwebs. Tucked into odd corners of the shelves were all manner of pharmaceutical curios: brass weights and measures, stained mortars and pestles, a glass globe full of brightly colored pills that looked like candy, a scale whose sign, YOUR WEIGHT AND FORTUNE, was almost obscured by dust. A row of large amber bottles, all marked in a flowing black script: ELIXIR MALTO-PEPSIN, AQ. ROSAE AND GLYC., HEXATONE. A drawer full of patent medicine bearing once-bright labels of yellow and red and green, fabulous claims, long arcane lists of ingredients. In a blue box stained with what must be rusty water marks, DOCTOR DeBARR’S MANDRAKE BLOOD AND LIVER PILLS. In a big bottle of pure white glass, NOAH’S LINIMENT—FOR ALL CREATION—MAN OR BEAST.

  “Come and look at this stuff,” Steve told Ghost. “It’s got something in it called uva ursi. What the hell is uva ursi?”

  Ghost didn’t answer. He was still in the middle of the room swaying. “Aloes,” he said softly. “Bear’s-foot root, elm bark, gentian, Jamaican ginger root …”

  “Look at this shit,” Steve said. “ ‘Powdered Nutgall Suppositories.’ Nice, huh?”

  “Indian rhubarb, nux vomica, quassia chips, asafoetida, peppermint …”

  Steve saw a little brown bottle on a high shelf. “ ‘Extract of Cannabis’!” He reached for the bottle.

  “Leave it alone … mullein leaf, boneset leaf, senna pods, anise, snakeroot … liverwort.” Ghost shook himself and opened his eyes. “Sorry. I was smelling.”

  “Balm’s ready!” Miz Catlin called a few minutes later.

  Ghost took a final sniff of the room’s delicate crumbling scent. As they turned to leave, Steve stepped onto the YOUR WEIGHT AND FORTUNE scale and dug in his pocket for a penny. “It doesn’t work,” said Ghost. “It broke a long time ago.” But Steve had already put the coin in. The scale clattered, clanked, ratcheted. A yellowed card fell out of the slot.

  “It never did that before,” Ghost said.

  Steve handed him the card. Ghost read it twice, first silently, then aloud: “ ‘Pain lies ahead for you and your beloved.’ ” Ghost’s eyes were dark and troubled.

  “Big fuckin’ deal,” said Steve. “I don’t have a beloved.” He crumpled the card.

  Miz Catlin eyed them suspiciously as they came out of the back room. “Somethin’ the matter?”

  “Your scale gave Steve a bad fortune,” Ghost said. He told her what had been printed on the card.

  She shook her head. “Well, I wouldn’t pay it too much mind. That old thing usually stays broke, but once in a while it gets temperamental. You can predict a passel of woe in anyone’s life if you’ve the inclination.” She stared at Steve, and her eyes sharpened. “You, though—I remember what Deliverance said about you. I don’t have the gift like her and Ghost, but I can see it too. You’re hotheaded, and you let your temper lead you. Don’t listen to your good heart as much as you ought to. Deliverance said you’d hurt somebody someday, no doubt about it—but that you’d end up hurtin’ yourself worst of all.”

  The drive back to town was subdued. The day had clouded over, grown muggy and stifling. Steve’s hangover was starting to come back. Ghost let the guitar lie on the floor. From time to time he hung his head out the window and checked the sky, his nostrils flaring anxiously, trying to scent rain. Ghost knew the next rain would bring on a cold spell; soon after that it would be time to batten down for the winter.

  “What the fuck is that?” said Steve when they were halfway home.

  Ghost looked. They were past the spot and over the swell of the road before he registered what he had seen: a lone angular figure huddled behind a flower stand. ROSES, said the painted wooden sign. The figure was tall, pale, wrapped entirely in black. Black cloak, black hat, big dark sunglasses. Even his hands were sheathed in black gloves.

  “Some fun, huh,” said Steve, and nervously cranked up his window. The air in the T-bird grew thick, smothering. Ghost didn’t know why the figure at the flower stand gave him a sick feeling, but he did know that such feelings seldom came to him without a reason. The worm of worry for Ann was still gnawing away in him too. And until he knew the reason, there was nothing he could do about it. Gh
ost put his forehead against the window and didn’t think again until they were home.

  17

  Morning on a sunny road with the music cranked up and the wine flowing free. Morning in this new world without long days at school and wasted evenings spent smoking too many cigarettes at Skittle’s. Morning, and someone to wake up with, three someones with their warm friendly bodies and their interesting, meaty smell. Nothing realized now that they smelled of blood, both old and fresh, and he found himself getting used to it, liking it. And at last he was in the South, with its green cathedrals of kudzu and its railroad tracks to clatter over at eighty miles an hour.

  Around lunchtime Zillah passed out tiny squares of paper—blotter, he said. “Crucifix” from New York. Molochai and Twig gulped theirs down. Nothing looked thoughtfully at his. He had only taken acid twice, weak stuff called Yin/Yang, bought off Jack for three dollars a hit. Then he shrugged. The tempo of his days would be different from now on; he might as well enjoy what came with them. He touched the square of paper to his tongue and let it dissolve there.

  Soon afterward they stopped at a Waffle House. Molochai wanted pie, and Twig requested a burger cooked very rare, but Zillah ordered only a glass of water and Nothing did not dare eat anything. Already he could feel the acid beginning to tickle inside him.

  Molochai and Twig spread their fingers on the greasy tabletop, laughing over some obscure private joke. Molochai started opening packets of sugar. Zillah was quiet, but Nothing could feel his gaze, green and hot and somehow demanding. Nothing toyed with the cream pitcher, shredded the corner of a paper napkin. What should he do? What did Zillah want him to do?

  He looked at Molochai and Twig, hoping for some kind of clue, but they were tussling. Arguing over who had more room in the plastic booth, it seemed. “I only have one inch—”