[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
kind.
I stopped immediately, fishing in my pocket as though I were a man about to step aside for a cigarette, and glanced
about.
There was nothing unusual about the lobby or about the crowd. Nevertheless, as I went outside the sensation overcame
me again that those in the driveway were looking at me, that they had penetrated my mortal disguise, which was by no
means easy, and that they knew what I was and what evil things I might be about.
Again, I checked. Nothing of the sort was happening. Indeed, the bell boys gave me rather cordial smiles when our eyes
met.
On I went towards the Rue Royale.
Once more, the sensation occurred. In fact, it seemed to me that not only were people everywhere taking notice of me,
but that they had come to the doors and windows of the shops and restaurants especially for the purpose; and the dizziness
which I seldom, if ever, felt as a vampire increased.
I was most uncomfortable. I wondered if this was the result of intimacy with a mortal being, because I'd never felt so
exposed before. In fact, due to my bronze skin I could move about the mortal world with total impunity. All my
supernatural attributes were veiled by the dark complexion, and my eyes, though too bright, were black.
Nevertheless, it seemed people stared at me surreptitiously all along the route which I took towards home.
Finally, when I was about three blocks from the flat I shared with Louis and Lestat, I stopped and leant against a black
iron lamppost, much as I had seen Lestat do in the old nights when he still moved about. Scanning the passersby I was
reassured again.
But then something startled me so that I began to tremble violently in spite of myself. There stood Merrick in a shop
door with her arms folded. She looked quite steadily and reprovingly at me, and then disappeared.
Of course it wasn't really Merrick at all, but the solidity of the apparition was horrifying.
A shadow moved behind me. I turned awkwardly. There again went Merrick, clothed in white, casting her long dark
glance at me, and the figure appeared to melt into the shadows of a shop door.
I was dumbfounded. It was witchcraft obviously, but how could it assault the senses of a vampire? And I was not only a
vampire, I was David Talbot who had been a Candomble priest in his youth. Now, as a vampire, I have seen ghosts and
spirits and I knew the spirits and the tricks they could play, and I knew a great deal about Merrick, but never had I
witnessed or experienced a spell just like this.
In a cab which crossed the Rue Royale, there was Merrick once again, looking up at me from the open window, her hair
loosened as I had left it. And when I turned around, quite certain she was behind me, I saw her unmistakable figure on a
balcony above.
The posture of the figure was sinister. I was trembling. I disliked this. I felt a fool.
I kept my eyes on the figure. In fact nothing could have moved me. The figure faded and was gone. All around me the
Quarter suddenly seemed quite desolate, though in fact there were tourists everywhere in great numbers, and I could hear
the music from the Rue Bourbon. Never had I seen so many flowerpots spilling their blooms over the iron lace railings.
Never had so many pretty vines climbed the weathered facades and the old stuccoed walls.
Intrigued and slightly angry, I went into the Rue Ste. Anne to see the café in which we'd met, and as I suspected it was
full to overflowing with diners and drinkers, and the wraith of a waiter seemed overwhelmed.
There sat Merrick in the very middle of it, full white skirt flaring, stiff, as though she'd been cut from cardboard; then of
course the apparition melted, as the others had done.
But the point was the café was now crowded, as it should have been when we'd been there! How had she kept people
away during our meeting? And what was she doing now?
I turned around. The sky above was blue, as the southern sky is so often in the evening, sprinkled with faint stars. There
was gay conversation and happy laughter all about. This was the reality of things, a mellow spring night in New Orleans,
when the flagstone sidewalks seem soft to the step of your foot, and the sounds sweet to your ears.
Yet there again came the sensation that everyone nearby was watching me. The couple crossing at the corner made a
point of it. And then I saw Merrick quite some distance down the street, and this time the expression on her face was
distinctly unpleasant, as though she were enjoying my discomfort.
I drew in my breath as the apparition melted away.
"How could she be doing this, that's the question!" I muttered aloud. "And why is she doing it?"
I walked fast, heading for the town house, not certain as to whether I would go into it, with this manner of curse all
around me, but as I approached our carriageway a large arched gate fitted into a frame of brickwork I then saw the
most frightening image of all.
Behind the bars of the gate stood the child Merrick of many years ago, in her same skimpy lavender shift, her head
slightly to the side as she nodded to confidences whispered in her ear by an elderly woman whom I knew for a certainty to
be her long-dead grandmother Great Nananne.
Great Nananne's thin mouth was smiling faintly and she nodded as she spoke.
At once the presence of Great Nananne deluged me with memories and remembered sensations. I was terrified, then
angry. I was all but disoriented, and had to pull myself up.
"Don't you vanish, don't you go!" I cried out, darting towards the gate, but the figures melted as if my eyes had lost
focus, as if my vision had been flawed.
I was past all patience. There were lights in our home above, and there came the enchanting sound of harpsichord
music, Mozart, if I was not mistaken, no doubt from Lestat's small disc player beside his four-poster bed. This meant he
had graced us with a visit this evening, though all he would do would be to lie on his bed and listen to recordings till
shortly before dawn.
I wanted desperately to go up, to be in our home, to let the music soothe my nerves, to see Lestat and see to him, and to
find Louis and tell him all that had occurred.
Nothing would do, however, except that I go back to the hotel at once. I could not enter our flat while under this "spell,"
and must stop it at the source.
I hurried to the Rue Decateur, found a cab, and vowed to look at nothing and no one until I had faced Merrick herself I
was becoming more and more cross.
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]