Blackwood Farm (63 page)

“It's positively electric,” I said. “It's as if his particles, assuming he's made of them—”

“He is,” she interjected.

“—are fused with mine, and I lose my equilibrium completely. I'm lost as well in memories, which he either engenders or falls prey to, I don't know which, but we travel back to moments in the crib or the playpen, and I feel only love for him as I must have felt as an infant or a toddler. It's a laughing bliss that I feel. And it's often wordless except for expressions of love, which are rudimentary.”

“How long does this last?”

“Moments, seconds,” said Lestat for me.

“Yes, and each time is stronger than the one before it,” I added. “The last time—it came last night—there was a tug on my heart as well as tiny slashing wounds, much worse than I've felt before, and he exited through the window, shattering all the glass much the same as he did tonight. He's never been so destructive before.”

“He has to be destructive now,” she said. “He's foolishly increased the material makeup of his being. Whereas once he was almost entirely energy, he now has considerable matter as well, and he can't pass through solid walls as he once did. On the contrary, he needs a doorway or a window.”

“That's exactly right,” I said. “I've been witnessing it. I've been feeling the air change, feeling him leave.”

She nodded. “It's in our favor that he's subject to gravity, but it's always so with ghosts. It's only more so now with him because he's developed an appetite for blood, and so encumbered himself. Can you tell me anything else about this fusion?”

I hesitated, then confessed. “It's very pleasurable. It's like . . . like an orgasm. It's like . . . it's like our contact with our victims. It's like the fusion with them, only it's much much milder.”

“Milder?” she asked. “Do you lose your equilibrium when you take your victims?”

“No, no I don't,” I answered. “I see your point. But the pleasure isn't as strong with Goblin. I'd admit it if it was. It's confusion I feel, along with mild pleasure.”

“Very well. Is there anything more that you can tell me?”

I thought for a long time. “I feel sad,” I said, “terribly sad because he's my brother, and he died, and he never had any life except the life I gave him. And now this has occurred, and he can't go on. And I think—I know—I should die with him.”

She studied me for several minutes, and so did Lestat, and then Lestat spoke up, his French accent rather sharp as he looked at me:

“That's not required, Quinn, and besides, even if you did try to take him with you into death, there's no guarantee that he would go.”

“Precisely,” said Merrick. “He might well let you go on and remain here to plague someone else. After all, he chose to be with you because you were his brother. But he could move to someone else. As you told Lestat, he's very cunning and he learns quickly.”

Lestat said,

“I don't want you to die, Little Brother.”

Merrick smiled. She said,

“The Coven Master won't let you die, Little Brother.”

“So what do we do?” I asked. I sighed. “What is to be the fate of Little Brother's Little Brother?”

“In a moment I'll explain that,” she said, “but let me explain what is happening now when you fuse with him. He is binding not just with you but with the spirit of the vampire inside you. Now, you know the old tales, that we are all the descendants of one parent in whom a pure spirit fused with a mortal, and that all of us to this very day are part of that one pure spirit, carrying in our preternatural bodies the immortal spirit which animates us and gives us our thirst for blood and our ability to live on it.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, your demon brother, being a ghost himself, is very like a spirit, and when he fuses with you now, he fuses with that spirit in you, and he knows a pleasure far greater than any he knew when you were mortal.”

“Ah, I see,” I said. “Of course.”

“He doesn't understand it. He only knows it's like a sweet drug to him, and he drinks of the vampiric blood to experience the supernatural as long and as completely as he can, and only when his endurance is at an end does he release you and vanish into invisibility and weakness again, lulled and dreaming with the blood he's taken.”

“Where does he go?”

She shook her head. “I don't know. He spreads out, losing his shape and his organization. Compare him to a great sea creature who is composed largely of seawater, only with him it's air, and he enjoys the blood as best he can until his energy burns it off, and he must wait for another opportunity, and all this takes time for him, just as appearances and communication have always taken time, as is so with all spirits.”

She stopped for a moment and watched me closely, as if to see if I understood. Then she continued.

“The better you understand him, the better it will be for us when I try to send him out of the Earthly Realm, because I can't do it, I don't think, without your full cooperation.”

“You have my cooperation,” I said. “As for my understanding, I'm trying.”

“Are you ready to let him go?” she asked.

“Let him go! Merrick, he killed Aunt Queen. I loathe and despise him! I hate him! I hate myself that I ever nourished him and fostered him! He's betrayed the womb we shared!”

She nodded to this.

The tears rose up in my eyes. I took out my handkerchief, but I had half a mind to let them flow. I was with the two people in the world who wouldn't be stunned by the sight of them.

“So how do we get rid of him?” I asked. “How do we get him out of the Earthly Realm?”

“I'll tell you,” Merrick responded. “But first let me ask. When we arrived tonight, I saw a very old cemetery down by the swamp. Lestat said it belonged to you. He said you'd seen spirits there.”

“Yes,” I replied. “Dumb spirits, spirits that give you nothing.” I wiped at my eyes. I felt a little more calm.

“But there are two or three raised tombs there, maybe three feet high.”

“There's one that's about that height. The letters are all worn away.”

“It's broad? Long?”

“Both. A rectangle.”

“That's good. I want you to lay out wood and coal for a big fire on that tomb. You need plenty of fuel. The fire has to burn really hot and for some time. Then throughout the rest of the cemetery, I want candles. Candles on every grave. You know the kind of candles I mean, thick church candles.” (I nodded.) “I'll light the candles. I'll light the fire. Just have these things ready for me. You can have your people do this part if you like, it's not important who does it.”

“But surely you don't want them around,” said Lestat.

“No, I don't. They have to go away from Blackwood Farm. Everybody.”

“What do I tell them?” I asked.

“Tell them the truth,” said Merrick. “Tell them that we are holding an exorcism to get rid of Goblin. The ritual is a dangerous one. Goblin in his fury might try to hurt anyone.”

“Of course,” I said. “But there's one problem. Patsy. Patsy is the only one who might not go.”

“Patsy herself has given you the key to her character,” said Lestat. “Here.” He reached into his pocket and he took out a gold money clip bulging with thousand-dollar bills. “Give her this. Send her with her nurse to a fine hotel in New Orleans.”

“Of course,” I said again.

“Big Ramona will see that she goes,” said Merrick. “You yourself see that everyone else is gone, and sending them to the Windsor Court or the Ritz-Carlton Hotel is a fine idea. I'm sorry I didn't think of it.”

“I'll take care of it,” I said. “But tell me—the actual exorcism. How are you going to do it?”

“The best way I know how,” she said. “My loving friends, the Troop of Beloveds, don't call me a witch for nothing.”

49

I THIRSTED
and I was alone.

I stood beneath the oak tree at the edge of the cemetery. I looked at the tomb which would be our altar tomorrow night.

Clem had known just where he would get our firewood—an old dead oak on the very boundary of the pasture. Tomorrow he'd come back and cut it with the chain saw, and the coal he'd buy in Mapleville. I wasn't to worry about a thing.

And for now he was gone with the rest of them. They had been glad to be going. There had been a positive excitement to their packing and laughter and talking, and rushing out to the limousine with suitcases, and hollering in the middle of the night.

Tommy had pleaded desperately to be allowed to watch the exorcism. Nash had finally guided him to the car.

Only Patsy had refused to go. Only Patsy had cursed at me and told me she wouldn't go along with my self-centered schemes to get rid of Goblin, only Patsy had remained behind. Finally I had sent Cindy the nurse away.

“I'll take care of her,” I had said.

And so the moment had come. It had been so quiet, actually, with the closing of the door of her room.

“What are you doing in here?” she had asked me. “You spoilt brat.”

Like a little child she looked in her cream-colored flannel nightgown, with her beauty parlor blond hair in rivulets down each side of her face.

“Get out of here,” she had said, “I don't want you here. Get going. I won't leave this house no matter what you do, you little bastard.”

And from her mind came the pure stream of animosity and jealousy, the pure hate she had so keenly expressed.

“I told you I don't want your money! I hate you.”

And then behind her, the filmy figure of Rebecca, my long-ago ghost. Hateful ghost, vengeful ghost. Why had she been there?—Rebecca, in her pert lace blouse and full taffeta skirt, smiling. Get away from me, vengeful ghost. Why had she dared to be there?
A life for my life.
I will not hear you!

I had picked up Patsy and snapped her neck before she had even become frightened. Killed my mother, my own mother. Big empty eyes. Lipstick. Dead Patsy.

Not a drop of her blood had I drunk.

Did anyone see me carry her over the threshold like a bride? No one, except for Rebecca, vengeful, hateful Rebecca hovering near the graveyard, Rebecca, just a vapor, smiling, exultant, in her pretty dress.
A death for my death.

And no one else saw me lay Patsy down in the pirogue. No one saw me go with her limp body out into the deepest waters of the swamp. And there she went down, down beneath the slimy green water—Cotton Candy Patsy no more. Barbie no more. My mother no more.

No one but me felt the shimmer of Rebecca. No one but me heard Rebecca's voice: “Now I count that a real fine vengeance: the life of Patsy for my life.” Laughter.

“Get thee behind me, Satan,” I had said. “I didn't do this for thee but for me.”

And then no more Rebecca, just as there was no more Patsy.

It had been so startling, the ghost gone, and Patsy gone, and the dense deadful swamp so empty. Mothergone.

The gators had moved in the water. Eat up Mother.

I had gone back alone to the empty cemetery.

Hours had passed.

And the blood of my mother was on my hands though there was no blood. And I would lie when I had to tell about her leaving, as I had lied about so much else, Quinn the killer of his own mother, Quinn the killer of the womb that bore him, Quinn the killer of so many, Quinn the killer of the bride, Quinn who had carried his mother over the threshold, Quinn who had sunk Patsy in the waters of the swamp.

I was alone now on Blackwood Farm.

And such a thing had never, ever happened, my being alone on this my land. And I stood beneath the oak looking at the tomb on which the altar would be laid, and wondering if the evil creature Goblin whom my little brother had become, the killer of Aunt Queen, could really be forced into the Light.

I closed my eyes. How I thirsted. But it was almost morning. I couldn't hunt. I hadn't the stamina. And tomorrow night, how could I do such a thing? Yet I had to do it before we began. How foolish had been my planning that I hadn't put aside my sorrow and my murdering hate, and gone before now.

Why did I linger by the little cemetery? What was I trying to remember? Where were the mute ones who had long ago gazed on me in my innocent years? Why did they not come this morning as the sky turned purple and pink to tell me that I belonged with the dead?

Maybe the sun wasn't as painful as the fire. But how could I do my part in destroying Goblin by merely walking into the morning? I needed courage. I needed strength.

I have it for you. Come into my arms.

I turned around. It was Lestat. I obeyed his command. I felt his arms tighten as he closed them. I felt his hand on the back of my head.

Kiss me, young one. Take what you need. It's mine to give.

I pressed my teeth to his skin. I felt the surface give and the boiling blood fill my mouth and flood down my throat. I felt it, potent and divine. For a long moment the pure physical power of it overcame all imagery, but then there rose a deluge of pictures, vivid and high tempo and neon brilliant, a roaring carousel of life, the shuffling of centuries, the panoply without end of magnificent sensations, and at last, a jungle of myriad colors and flowers and the tender, pulsing core of his heart, his pure heart, his heart for me, his heart and nothing more could ever be wanted, nothing evermore.

50

SUMMER NIGHT.
The sun didn't set until six-thirty. Quiet lay over Blackwood Farm.

Clem had banked the firewood high around the entire tomb, and wood and coal were layered on top of it. And everywhere stood the candles.

Merrick was there in a lovely full-skirted dress of black cotton with long sleeves, and beads of jet around her throat. Her hair was free. And she carried with her a very large bag covered with fancy and glittering beadwork with two grips for handles, which she carefully set beside one of the tombs, and she made the Sign of the Cross and laid her hand respectfully on that grave, which was to be the altar.

With a lighter she ignited the first candle. Then from the bag she took a long taper, and, once it was lighted, went to the other candles one by one. Slowly the little cemetery filled with light.

Lestat stood at my side with his hand in the small of my back. I was shivering as if I was cold.

At last the entire graveyard was illuminated, and as Clem had put several rows of candles in the little church, which I had forgotten altogether, they were lighted by Merrick as well, and a flickering light came from the church windows.

I felt a cold trepidation as Merrick lifted the can of kerosene and poured it over the coals and the wood lavishly, and then applied the taper and stepped back. I had never seen a freestanding fire of this size.

“Come here to me, both of you,” she called out. “And be my helpers, and repeat what I tell you to repeat and do as I say. What you've believed in the past is not important. Believe with me now. That is everything. And you must put your faith in what I do and say to make this exorcism strong.”

We both gave her our consent.

“Quinn, don't fear it,” she said.

The fire was blazing and crackling. I stepped back, instinctively, and Merrick and Lestat moved back as well. Lestat seemed particularly to hate it. Merrick seemed in some way fascinated. Too fascinated, I thought, but then what did I know?

“Tell me the true names of Garwain's parents and ancestors, as you know them,” said Merrick.

“Julien and Grace; Gravier and Alice; Thomas and Rose; Patsy—that's all.”

“Very well. Now remember what I've said to you,” she told us. And, stepping back, she reached into the large black bag again and took from it a golden knife. With the knife she slashed at her wrist, and, drawing as close to the fire as she could, she let her blood splash into it.

Then Lestat, fearing for her, yanked her back from the scorching flames.

She drew in her breath as though she had been in danger and even frightened herself. Then she brought out a chalice from the bag, and she told me to hold it, and she slashed her wrist again, deeply and roughly, and the blood flowed into the cup, and she took it from me, and she heaved the blood into the flames.

The heat of the fire was dreadful now, and it frightened me and I hated it. I hated it with a Blood Hunter's instinct and a human's instinct. I was relieved when Merrick took the chalice from my hands.

Suddenly Merrick threw back her head and raised her arms, forcing us both to step away from her and give her room. She cried out:

“Lord God, Who made all things, seen and unseen, bring your servant Garwain to me, for he still roams the Earthly Realm and is lost to your Wisdom and your Protection! Bring him here to me, Lord, that I may guide him to you. Lord, hear my cry. Lord, let my cry come unto you. Hear your servant Merrick. Look not on my sins, but on my cause! Join your voices with me, Lestat and Tarquin! Now.”

“Hear us, O Lord,” I said immediately, hearing Lestat murmuring a similar prayer. “O Lord, hear us. Bring Garwain here.”

Frightened as I was, I found myself suddenly locked to the ceremony, and as Merrick continued, Lestat and I murmured some of the more familiar chants.

“Lord, look with mercy on your servant Garwain,” called out Merrick, “who from infancy has roamed in confusion among other mortals, lost from the Light and no doubt hungering for it. Lord, hear our prayer. Lord, look down on Garwain, Lord, send Garwain to us!”

All of a sudden, a huge gust of wind swept the nearby oak trees, and a shower of leaves came down on the fire, which sent up a roar of crackling, and the wind greatly excited it and increased it, and I saw above it, as best as I could, the figure of Goblin as my double, his eyes red in the light of the fire.

“You think a spirit doesn't know the tricks of a witch, Merrick,” said Goblin in his low flat voice, which carried over the noise of the fire—a voice I hadn't heard in over four years. “You think I don't know you want to kill me, Merrick? You hate me, Merrick.”

At once the figure began to thin out and grow immense and come down with full force upon Merrick, but she cried out:

“Burn now, burn!”

And we all cut loose with our force against him, crying out the single word, “burn,” as we sent the power, and as he rose over the flames we saw him, a thing of myriad tiny flames, paralyzed above the fire and retracting and howling in a soundless and ghastly confusion, and then turning in on himself and coiling so that he became a formed wind assaulting the altar, and then a funnel as he bore down on Merrick once again.

The noise was intolerable. The leaves were a hurricane upon us and the blaze flared. Merrick staggered backwards, but we kept up the force, crying out:

“Burn, Garwain, burn!”

“Burn till all of you is pure ghost as it should be!” cried Merrick, “and you can pass into the Light as God wills, Garwain!”

And then she turned and from the large black bag she snatched a small bundle, and, peeling back the white blankets that covered it, she revealed the small shriveled corpse of a child!

“This is you, Garwain!” she cried out. “This is you, brought from your grave, the body from which you departed, wandering astray, confounded and confused! This is your mortal body, your infant self, and from this self you have roamed lost and feeding upon Quinn! See this tiny form, this is your form, Goblin!”

“Liar!” came his voice, and he rose up on this side of the altar, right before us, my doppelgänger down to the buttons, raging at her and trying to snatch the tiny black shriveled infant out of her arms, but she wouldn't let it go and she roared at him:

“You are smoke and mirrors, you are air and will and theft and terror. Go where God will send you! Lord, I beg you, take this servant, take him as you will!”

His image wavered. He was trying to fuse with her. She was resisting him with all her power. I could see him faltering and fading. He grew pale and large and billowing in the firelight. What did the fire feel like to him?

Once again, he rose high above us, spread out above us like a canopy.

I raised my voice: “Dear God, who made Julien, Gravier, Patsy, take him, take this orphan! Grace, Alice, Rose, come for this doomed wanderer. Add your prayers to ours.”

“Yes,” cried Merrick, clutching the infant corpse tight to her breast, “Julien, Gravier, Thomas—I beg you, come from your eternal rest and take this child into the Light, take him!”

“I repudiate you, Goblin, now and forever!” I called out. “I do so before God! Before Pops, before all my ancestors, before the angels and the saints! O Lord hear my prayer!”

“O Lord, hear our cry!” pleaded Merrick.

She lifted the baby up, and I saw with my own eyes a living child! I saw its limbs move, I heard its mewling! I heard its crying!

“Yes, Goblin!” she cried out. “Your infant self, yes! Come into this form. Come into your rightful flesh! I adjure you, come as I command you.”

High above the fire the giant image of Goblin shivered, horrific and weak and confused, and then plunged, plunged into the crying infant. I saw it. I felt it. I said in my heart:
Amen, brother, amen.

There came a terrible wailing and once again the branches of the oak trees thrashed in the wind.

And then there was utter stillness except for the fire. There was a stillness so total that it seemed the Earth had stopped turning.

Only the fire roared.

I realized I was on the ground. An invisible force had knocked me down.

I was seeing a brilliant light but it wasn't hurting my eyes. It was nothing short of magnificent and it was falling down on the fire, and yet something terrible was happening in the fire.

Merrick had gone into the fire. Merrick had climbed up on the altar and had gone into the fire with the baby and they were both burning. They were burning—unspeakable, irrevocable—but in the pure celestial Light I saw figures moving, thin figures—the gaunt unmistakable figure of Pops in the Light, and with him an infant, a tiny infant toddling along, and there also was Merrick, Merrick and a small old woman, and I saw Merrick turn and raise her hand as if to say farewell.

I lay transfixed by the Light, by its immensity and the undeniable sense of love that seemed part of its nature.

I think that I cried.

Then slowly the great wealth of blessed Light faded. Its warmth and its glory went away. The heat of the night closed around me. The Earth was the lonely Earth again.

Rediscovering my limbs and how to use them I rose to my feet and realized Lestat had pulled Merrick's body from the fire and was sobbing and trying to put out the flames that were consuming her, beating at her burning figure with his coat.

“She's gone, I saw her go,” I said.

But he was frantic. He wouldn't listen to me. The flames were finally smothered, but half her face was burnt away and most of her torso and her right arm. It was a dreadful sight. He slit his wrist, he let the thick, viscid blood pour down on her body, but nothing happened. I knew what he wanted to happen. I knew the lore.

“She's gone,” I said again. “I saw her go. I saw her in the Light. She waved farewell.”

Lestat stood up. He wiped at his blood tears and at the soot on his face. He couldn't stop crying. I loved him.

We lifted her remains and put them on the altar together. We built up the fire and it wasn't long before the body was ashes, and we scattered them. And the fire and Merrick's body were no more.

The humid night was quiet and calm and the cemetery lay in darkness.

Lestat cried.

“She was so young among us,” he said. “It's always the young ones who end it. The ones for whom mortality holds magic. As we grow older it's eternity that is our boon.”