by Marvin Kaye
nipples. They were inching toward each other. I was all, Holy shit, they're gonna
get it on right here, in front of all these people… if they even are people. Cat's
upper lip was quivering. The sweat was beading up on it. I could barely look at
their pussies. I'd glimpsed pussy before, and in pornos you watch it all you want,
but it's on a TV screen. This was different. I was afraid if I stared too long, I don't
know, I was gonna have an accident.
—Your Honor, could the witness get to the point already?
—Sustained.
—I'm afraid he's right, Jeremy. The jury doesn't really need to know about
your… accidents.
—Well, I didn't have no accident anyways, sir.
—Why?
—Just when I thought the two of them were going to really, you know, get
down, the lid of the coffin in the middle started to creak open.
—A little like yesterday's little incident?
—Oh, no, sir. It was real slow, like. And then all the people there fell on the
floor. I don't mean they tripped, I mean they fell to their knees, faces in the dust,
even the two naked bitches. It was like, you know, I seen this movie about an
ancient Chinese emperor, it was death to look him directly in the face. I could
feel… fear in the room… and power. Real power. I was scared. I narrowly
avoided one kind of accident, and now I was fixing to have another kind. Well, the
lid was creaking open. Dust was flying. The lid swung up, and this old man was
sitting up slowly. He was old, real old. Okay, he didn't look that old, but you
could feel it in him. And he spoke. Slowly. Like he was having trouble
remembering how to speak. Later they done told me that his kind don't have much
use for talking amongst themselves; it's chiefly for the benefit of the ones that are
still human. Oh, it won't English, neither. But one of the guys in black got up off
his knees and crept up closer, and he translated everything in a flat, echoey voice.
The first thing he says is, The Duke asks what new creatures come before him
today.
—Meaning the two girls?
—Yes, sir, I guess, because the sex goddess and the geek stand up, and
they're all coyly looking at the floor and half smiling, and their nipples are still
hard. And they both say, Your Grace, we humbly beg for the honor of attending
you. Well, His Grace mumbles something, and the translator says, How may you
prove your worthiness? And they answer, We are yours entirely, body, soul, in life
and death and undeath. We wish to become consorts of the darkness. We wish
the everlasting night. We pine for the sunset. We abhor the light. We have listened
in the wilderness and heard the music of the night.
—The sex goddess and the geek, as you call them, said all that? In those
precise words?
—I reckon it was learned from a book or something, sir.
—So this appeared to be some kind of ritual?
—Yes, sir.
—Your Honor, I thought that this trial was about the defendant, not the erotic
fantasies of some disturbed adolescent. I must continue to protest this undignified
latitude in allowing endless filth to spew forth from the witness without any real
connection to the defendant's guilt or innocence!
—Yes, yes, sustained, sustained, though I'm sure the lurid details will all be in
your next book, Counselor!
—I resent that, Your Honor!
—Be quiet and let the kid tell the rest of his story. If the defense would care to
continue… I'm as anxious to get to the relevance of this as anyone else here.
—Yes, Your Honor. Mr. Kindred… Jeremy… go on. Go easy on the sex.
Unless it specifically concerns the defendant.
—All right, sir.
—Tell us about the defendant and his role in all this, then.
—Well, the translator guy, he says to the two girls, You know that before you
can cross over, you must bid the flesh farewell… and you must find a willing
lamb… a sacrifice. And Cat Sperling said, We have such a lamb, Your Grace.
We've tracked him, we've lured him, we've cornered him, and we have him.
—And by "him," they meant the defendant?
—I guess so, sir, cause Jody done stepped forward.
—What was the defendant's demeanor?
—Huh?
—How did he look?
—Pale, sir, real pale. But determined, too. Whatever was about to happen, it
looked like he'd thought it over and was gonna do it, no matter what. Grim, sir,
real grim. It's amazing to me how young he looks at that moment. I know he's
really older than me, but he comes off like a little kid. Scrawny. And so pale.
Maybe that phosphorescence shit was rubbing off on him. He looked back only
once. Looked me right in the eye. Knew I was there, knew I was watching. No one
else saw, no one else knew. I thought about what he said to me earlier. I ain't long
for this world, Jer, but I'm meant to go out like a comet, not like a lil' old candle.
Jody was fixing to die. I realized that. All of a sudden. Something had happened
between him and Cat Sperling. Something that had pushed him over the edge. Like
the preacher says on Hour of Power, into the abyss.
Well, the translator dude says to Jody, Do you come here of your own free
will? And Jody's all, I do. Then the guy says, You will lose a lot of blood. Perhaps
you will even die. But if you survive this ritual, you will be on the way to a
different plane of existence. The one who brings you to us, the woman formerly
called Cat, she was once such a lamb. To surrender yourself to the dark, to let the
undead feast upon you, is to step blindfolded off the edge of the bottomless pit.
You must trust. You must believe. Darkness will love you. Darkness will enfold
you. Darkness will shield you. Do you accept such a destiny? If you do not, speak
now, and in the morning you will wake up in your own bed, and remember
nothing. But if you say aye, you will never again know where you will wake up in
the morning: in your own bed, on a bed of thorns, in a coffin, in the wormy earth.
Think carefully before you answer, Jody Palmer. It may be that you will never
again see daylight. Some who have a special affinity for our kind … make the
passage in a single night… and wake to eternal darkness. For most… well, for
some there is the true death… but they would never have made the crossing;
anyway… it's a talent you're born with. And for some, a slow, agonizing sickness
that may or may not lead to death and the crossing into undeath. We cannot tell.
There is no science of vampirology. Do you understand what we are telling you?
And Jody was all, Yes.
…
—And?
—I'm sorry, sir. I was just trying to remember the details. After this it gets
kinda all confused.
—Take your time, Jeremy.
—Yes sir. Thank you, sir.
—You're telling us that these… creatures… made an offer to your friend, and
he accepted it. An offer that, he believed, would bring about his death and
transfiguration… his metamorphosis into a creature beyond life.
—I reckon so, sir. I mean, there was nothing for him in the real world anyways.
He was always kind of a throwaway kid.
—Did he give any impression of having been coerced into this choice?
—Maybe he didn't feel he had no choice.
—What did the defendant do next?
—He stepped forward. And the translator guy said, First comes the
consummation of all carnal pleasure. Then comes the drawing of the blood. The
first is your farewell to the flesh, you candidates for initiation into the Brotherhood
of Blood; the second is your salutation of the spirit.
—So the defendant believed he was being initiated into some kind of vampiric
existence?
—No, you got it all wrong. Them two girls was the initiates. Jody was the
lamb, the offering, the sacrifice.
—He was willing to die for this?
—I reckon so.
—What happened next?
—It gets confusing, sir. Because the first part of the ritual, that was the
"farewell to the flesh" thing, slowly shifted into the second part… the blood ritual.
It started with the two girls undressing Jody, slowly, sexily… for example, Cat
would undo one of his shirt buttons with her teeth, then Connie would do the next
one down, while Cat was sort of sliding her tongue in and out between the
buttons, teasing his chest. And they were all rubbing their titties up and down him.
Now I knew that Jody really had never had no sex before, well, no more than third
base, anyways. But when they finally got the pants off him, he wasn't even hard.
He just stood there, with a faraway look, fixing on some dark future he had always
dreamed about. But the two girls were at him like there was no tomorrow. I guess,
for them, in a way, there wasn't. They surrounded him. They were a blur of arms
and legs and lips and tongues and gleaming pussies. I couldn't believe it, but
mousy Constance was the wilder of the two bitches. She was squeezing Jody's
scrawny ass, pumping against him, even thrusting her tongue in his butt hole. But
Cat was more playful. She skimmed her tongue along his arms, his fingers, and
when she reached his balls and started flicking at them, he finally started to get
aroused. I think he was holding himself in, trying to resist, thinking to himself that
giving in to sex was some kind of weakness, that he was there for the violence, not
the sex… but no red-blooded guy could stay soft forever with them two working
him over. And now they were taking turns, one holding him upright while the other
slid up and down on him, spinning him around, making him dizzy, and he was
moaning now, I couldn't make out all of it but it was all sick, private stuff, about
his childhood, his parents, I don't know… and then it started to turn toward
violence… first one girl then the other was raking at him with her nails, nails that
seemed to get longer and sharper… nails that seemed to curl up, tighten, into
claws… the girls were bucking and heaving as they pushed him down against the
middle coffin, where the vampire master dude was still sitting, watching, his eyes
slowly reddening… or was that just the flickering of the torches?… I don't
know… and the crowd in black was hemming in closer… making it harder for me
to see… and I knew they weren't noticing me any more, I even felt safe creeping
out from behind the statue… keeping low to the ground… peering through the sea
of legs and cloaks… glimpses now… the girls licking their lips… their eyes
slitting… bending over him… slicing at his chest, his abdomen with their animal
claws… and biting now… I could see fangs. They all had fangs. All them blackclad people with them glowing white faces. Their fangs glistened in the dark like a
thousand stars. And there were other sharp things. I saw spikes… razor blades…
pocket knives… hypodermics… all ready to harvest my best friend's lifeblood.
The girls were still all over him… pleasure transforming into pain… but the others
were moving in now… I could see a razor slice just beneath his nipple… I could
see a delicate mouth close in on his ankle… and Jody was all convulsing now, I
couldn't tell if it was from like an orgasm or whether they was killing the fuck out
of him. Jesus, I was scared. I wanted it to stop. Me against a hundred
bloodsuckers, what was I thinking? But that was my best friend out there. But did
you ever see a pig that's been hit on the head in the slaughterhouse? That's how it
looked. I mean, he was shaking like a fucking pile driver. I couldn't stand it. I
mean, Jody, you know? Friends since the sixth grade. Camp outs, swimming
holes, dirty websites, all the shit young guys grow up together doing. Well, what I
done was dumb.
—What did you do, Mr. Kindred?
—Well, I ripped the cross off the Archangel Michael's neck, and I pulled off
the sword, and like a wild man I charged.
—You attacked a crowd of… sadistic vampire cultists?
—Cultists? Hell no, sir, these people was actual vampires. 'Cause when the
shadow of the cross fell upon them, they started screaming. And scattering. And I
was screaming, too, a pretty damn impressive scream for a kid, a scream like a
banshee, and swinging that big old heavy sword like it was nothing more'n a letter
opener. Shit, I scared the fuckers. I think. There was this big flapping noise. Dust
everywhere. Swirling. Mist. Everything was whirling, and there was this roar, like a
tornado or something. I don't think I actually hit anything with the sword.
Everything was dissolving before I could smash bronze against flesh. I saw Jody
on the ground there in front of the middle coffin. He was naked, and I swear to
God he was half drained already. There was so much blood, just sluicing from a
hundred cuts on him, pouring out onto the rocky floor. I knelt down and tried to
lift him up, but he was heavy, there won't no give to him at all, it was like he was
already dead. I was still all crazed and I shook him, I was all, Wake up, Jody, this
is your buddy telling you, come out of it, you ain't dead yet. And then the weirdest
thing of all happened. You know all that swirling mist I was talking about? Well, it
seemed to gather up the coffins and the cave walls and even the sword-less St.
Michael over there, and even the dirt beneath us, and it was all billowing about us
and darkening, and the torches were blowing out one by one, and my friend was
stirring a little, and I was all, Jody, don't die, don't die, don't die, when all at once
the world seemed to melt around us… like a dissolve in a movie… and we were
somewhere else. I smelled a fresh wind. Flowers. Old trees and rotting leaves. We
were in the hills. The cemetery was way below us… and the moon was shining
through the treetops. What happened? When I arrived at the cemetery, there'd
been cars everywhere, pickups, Mustangs, a Mercedes, a police car… now I
couldn't see a one in that parking lot… and the graveyard was deserted. Jody was
still lying across my lap… still bleeding to death… or was he? In the bright
moonlight I saw… the wounds closing up… the scratches fading… the blood sort
of evaporating, melding into the night mist… I didn't understand. I knew it won't
no dream. I knew it had to be real… but… Jody was moaning now. I was all,
Wake up, wake up… and, slowly, he did.
—I see. And I awoke and found
me here, on the cold hill's side.
—Yeah. I guess so.
—You saved your friend's life.
—Maybe, but he sure didn't thank me for it.
—No?
—Shit, no, sir. When he come to, it was just about twilight, and I'd been
watching him, and I'd covered him with my own jacket, and I was trying my ass
off to make him come back into the world… and when he finally opened his eyes,
well, he didn't look like he was fixing to thank me at all. He looked at me with
slitted eyes, and I saw hate. Pure, naked hate. I sure was shocked. I said, Jody,
it's me, your best friend, Jer. They were gonna kill you in there. I don't know what
happened, but I got you out… somehow. And he whispers to me, gasping for
breath between every word, like he's struggling to keep from slipping back into
darkness, Jer, I wanted it. That was my chance. I'm nobody in this world. I was
about to be something. Let go of me, Jeremy, and don't come near me again. And
he shook off my jacket… stood up… just as the first rays of sunlight were
breaking over the gravestones below yonder… he stood up, naked as the day he
was born, stood up and walked away from me. He was so frail and thin he was
almost like a little kid. But here's the weird thing… the scars was all healed. There
won't a scratch on that boy. The sun painted him a golden sort of color, and he
didn't hardly seem human. And he walked away. Away from the coming light…
into the thickest part of the wood… like he was afraid of the sun.
—Did you speak to him after that?
—Not really. I think he tried to go back to one of their cemetery parties… they
usually had them on the full moon… but I know he never was able to get back
inside that monument. That stone carving of the jaws of hell… well, stone was all
it was to him. He had lost the key. I took it from him. I was stupid, I guess. I really
didn't understand him after all. He fell in with other kids. Started a new "secret
society" of some kind. A wanna-be vampire society. I heard about it mostly
from—
—Your Honor, this is all hearsay now.
—Sustained.
—Your Honor, we have already heard evidence about young Jody Palmer's
secret society… from all sorts of expert witnesses as well as from the ex-members
themselves. I'm not seeking to add anything to the record on that matter from this
