Memnoch the Devil

3

I WALKED on only a few steps, saw revolving doors, pushed into the lobby of someplace or other, a restaurant I think, and found myself sitting at the bar. Just what I wanted, half empty, very dark, too warm, bottles glittering in the center of the circular counter. Some comforting noise from the diners beyond the open doors.

I put my elbows on the bar, my heels hooked on the brass rail. I sat there on die stool shivering, listening to mortals talk, listening to nothing, listening to the inevitable sloth and stupidity of a bar, head down, sunglasses gone—damn, I had lost my violet glasses!—yes, nice and dark here, very, very dark, a kind of late-night languor lying over everything, a club of some sort? I didn't know, didn't care. "Drink, sir?" Lazy, arrogant face.

I named a mineral water. And as soon as he set down the glass, I dipped my fingers into it and washed them. He was gone already. Wouldn't have cared if I had started baptizing babies with the water. Other customers were scattered at tables in the darkness ... a woman crying in some far-off corner and a man telling her harshly that she was attracting attention. She wasn't. Nobody gave a damn.

I washed my mouth off with the napkin and water.

"More water," I said. I pushed the polluted glass away from me. Sluggishly, he acknowledged my request, young blood, bland personality, ambitionless life, then drifted off.

I heard a little laugh nearby . . . the man to my right, two stools away, perhaps, who'd been there when I came in, youngish, scentless. Utterly scentless, which was most strange.

In annoyance I turned and looked at him.

"Going to run again?" he whispered. It was the Victim.

It was Roger, sitting there on the stool.

He wasn't broken or battered or dead. He was complete with his head and his hands. He wasn't there. He only appeared to be there, very solid and very quiet, and he smiled at me, thrilled by my terror. "What's the matter, Lestat?" he asked in that voice I so loved after six months of listening to it. "No one in all these centuries has ever come back to haunt you?"

I said nothing. Not there. No, not there. Material, but not the same material as anything else. David's word. Different fabric. I stiffened. That's a pathetic understatement. I was rigid with incredulity and rage.

He got up and moved over onto the stool close to me. He was getting more distinct and detailed by the second. Now I could catch something like a sound coming from him, a sound of something alive, or organized, but certainly no breathing human being.

"And in a few minutes more I'll be strong enough perhaps to ask for a cigarette or a glass of wine," he said.

He reached into his coat, a favorite coat, not the one in which I'd killed him, another coat made for him in Paris, that he liked, and he drew out his flashy little gold lighter and made the flame shoot up, very blue and dangerous, butane.

He looked at me. I could see that his black curly hair was combed, his eyes very clear. Handsome Roger. His voice sounded exactly the way it had when he was alive: international, originless, New Orleans- born and world-traveled. No British fastidiousness, and no Southern patience. His precise, quick voice.

"I'm quite serious," he said. "You mean in all these years, not one single victim has ever come back to haunt you?"

"No," I said.

"You're amazing. You really won't tolerate being afraid for a moment, will you?"

"No."

Now he appeared completely solid. I had no idea whether anyone else could see him. No idea, but I suspected they could. He looked like anyone might look. I could see the buttons on his white cuffs, and the soft white flash of his collar at the back of the neck, where the fine hair came down over it. I could see his eyelashes, which had always been extraordinarily long.

The bartender returned and set down the water glass for me, without looking at him. I still wasn't sure. The kid was too rude for that to be proof of anything except that I was in New York.

"How are you doing this?" I asked.

"The same way any other ghost does it," he said. "I'm dead. I've been dead for over an hour and a half now, and I have to talk to you!

I don't know how long I can stay here, I don't know when I'll start to ... God knows what, but you have to listen to me."

"Why?" I demanded.

"Don't be so nasty," he whispered, appearing truly hurt. "You murdered me."

"And you? The people you've killed, Dora's mother? She ever come back to demand an audience with you?"

"Ooh, I knew it. I knew it!" he said. He was visibly shaken. "You know about Dora! God in Heaven, take my soul to Hell, but don't let him hurt Dora."

"Stop being absurd. I wouldn't hurt Dora. It was you I was after.

I've followed you around the world. If it hadn't been for a passing respect for Dora, I would have killed you long before now."

The bartender had reappeared. This brought the most ecstatic smile to my companion's lips. He looked right at the kid.

"Yes, my dear boy, let me see, the very last drink unless I'm very badly mistaken, make it bourbon. I grew up in the South. What do you have? No, I'll tell you what, son, just make it Southern Comfort." His laugh was private and convivial and soft.

The bartender moved on, and Roger turned his furious eyes on me. "You have to listen to me, whatever the Hell you are, vampire, demon, devil, I don't care, you cannot hurt my daughter."

"I don't intend to hurt her. I would never hurt her. Go on to hell, you'll feel better. Good night."

"You smug son of a bitch. How many years do you think I had?" Droplets of sweat were breaking out on his face. His hair was moving a little in the natural draft through the room.

"I couldn't give less of a damn!" I said. "You were a meal worth waiting for."

"You've got quite a swagger, don't you?" he said acidly. "But you're nothing as shallow as you pretend to be."

"Oh, you don't think so? Try me. You may find me 'as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.' "

That gave him pause.

It gave me pause too. Where did those words come from? Why did they roll off my tongue like that? I was not likely to use that sort of imagery!

He was absorbing all this, my preoccupation, my obvious self-doubt. How did it manifest itself, I wonder? Did I sag or fade slightly as some mortals do, or did I merely look confused?

The bartender gave him the drink. Very tentatively now, he was trying to put his fingers around it and lift it. He managed and got it to his lips and took a taste. He was amazed, and thankful, and suddenly so full of fear that he almost disintegrated. The illusion was almost completely dispersed.

But he held firm. This was so obviously the person I had just killed, hacked to pieces and buried all over Manhattan, that I felt physically sick staring at him. I realized only one thing was saving me from panic. He was talking to me. What had David said once, when he was alive, about talking to me? That he wouldn't kill a vampire because the vampire could talk to him? And this damned ghost was talking to me.

"I have to talk to you about Dora," he said.

"I told you I will never hurt her, or anyone like her," I said.

"Look, what are you doing here with me! When you appeared, you didn't even know that I knew about Dora! You wanted to tell me about Dora?"

"Depth, I've been murdered by a being with depth, how fortunate, someone who actually keenly appreciated my death, no?" He drank more of the sweet-smelling Southern Comfort. "This was Janis Joplin's drink, you know," he said, referring to the dead singer whom I, too, had loved. "Look, listen to me out of curiosity, I don't give a damn. But listen. Let me talk to you about Dora and about me.

I want you to know. I want you to really know who I was, not what you might think. I want you to look out for Dora. And then there's something back at the flat, something I want you.. .,"

"Veronica's veil in the frame?"

"No! That's trash. I mean, it's four centuries old, of course, but it's a common version of Veronica's veil, if you have enough money. You did look around my place, didn't you?"

"Why did you want to give that veil to Dora?" I asked.

This sobered him appropriately. "You heard us talking?"

"Countless times."

He was conjecturing, weighing things. He looked entirely reasonable, his dark Asian face evincing nothing but sincerity and great care.

"Did you say 'look out for Dora'?" I asked. "Is that what you asked me to do? Look out for her? Now that's another proposition and why the hell do you want to tell me the story of your life! You're running through your personal afterdeath judgment with the wrong guy! I don't care how you got the way you were. The things at the flat, why would a ghost care about such things?"

This was not wholly honest on my part. I was being far too flippant and we both knew it. Of course he cared about his treasures. But it was Dora that had made him rise from the dead.

His hair was a deeper black now, and the coat had taken on more texture. I could see the weave of the silk and the cashmere in it. I could see his fingernails, professionally manicured, very neat and buffed. Same hands I threw in the garbage! I don't think all these details had been visible moments ago.

"Jesus Christ," I whispered.

He laughed. "You're more afraid than I am."

"Where are you?"

"What are you talking about?" he asked. "I'm sitting next to you.

We're in a Village bar. What do you mean, where am I? As for my body, you know where you dumped the pieces of it as well as I."

"That's why you're haunting me."

"Absolutely not. Couldn't give less of a damn about that body.

Felt that way the moment I left it. You know all this!"

"No, no, I mean, what realm are you in now, what is it, where are you, what did you see when you went. .. what.. .."

He shook his head with the saddest smile.

"You know the answer to all that. I don't know where I am.

Something's waiting for me, however. I'm fairly certain of that. Something's waiting. Perhaps it's merely dissolution. Darkness. But it seems personal. It's not going to wait forever. But I don't know how I know.

"And I don't know why I'm being allowed to get through to you, whether it's sheer will, my will, I mean, of which I have a great deal by the way, or whether it's some sort of grant of moments, I don't know! But I went after you-I followed you from the flat and back to it and then out with the body and I came here and I have to talk to you. I'm not going to go without a struggle, until I've spoken with you."

"Something's waiting for you," I whispered. This was awe. Plain and simple. "And then, after we've had our chat, if you don't dissolve, where exactly are you going to go?"

He shook his head and glared at the bottle on the center rack, flood of light, color, labels.

"Tiresome," he said crossly. "Shut up."

It had a sting to it. Shut up. Telling me to shut up.

"I can't go looking out for your daughter," I said.

"What do you mean?" He threw an angry glance at me, and took another sip of his drink, then gestured to the bartender for another.

"Are you going to get drunk?" I asked.

"I don't think I can. You have to look out for her. It's all going to go public, don't you see? I have enemies who'll kill her, for no other reason than that she was my child. You don't know how careful I've been, and you don't know how rash she is, how much she believes in Divine Providence. And then there's the government, the hounds of government, and my things, my relics, my books!"

I was fascinated. For about three seconds, I'd utterly forgotten that he was a ghost. Now my eyes gave me no evidence of it. None. But he was scentless, and the faint sound of life that emanated from him still had little to do with real lungs or a real heart.

"All right, let me be blunt," he said. "I'm afraid for her. She has to get through the notoriety; enough time has to pass that my enemies forget about her. Most of them don't know about her. But somebody might. Somebody's bound to know, if you knew."

"Not necessarily. I'm not a human being."

"You have to guard her."

"I can't do such a thing. I won't"

"Lestat, will you listen to me?"

"I don't want to listen. I want you to go."

"I know you do."

"Look, I never meant to kill you, I'm sorry, it was all a mistake, I should have picked someone. ..." My hands were shaking. Oh, how fascinating all this would sound later, and right now I begged God, of all people, please make this stop, all of it, stop.

"You know where I was born, don't you?" he asked. "You know that block of St. Charles near Jackson?"

I nodded. "The boardinghouse," I said. "Don't tell me the story of your life. There's no reason. Besides, it's over. You had your chance to write it down when you were alive, just like anyone else. What do you expect me to do with it?"

"I want to tell you the things that count. Look at me! Look at me, please, try to understand me and love me and love Dora for me!

I'm begging you."

I didn't have to see his expression to understand this keen agony, this protective cry. Is there anything under God that can be done to us that will make us suffer as badly as seeing our child suffer? Our loved ones? Those closest to us? Dora, tiny Dora walking in the empty convent. Dora on a television screen, arms flung out, singing.

I must have gasped. I don't know. Shivered. Something. I couldn't clear iny head for a moment, but it was nothing supernatural, only misery, and the realization that he was there, palpable, visible, expecting something from me, that he had come across, that he had survived long enough in this ephemeral form to demand a promise of me.

"You do love me," he whispered. He looked serene and intrigued.

Way beyond flattery, way beyond me.

"Passion," I whispered. "It was your passion."

"Yes, I know. I'm flattered. I wasn't run down by a truck in the street, or shot by a hit man. You killed me! You, and you must be one of the best of them."

"Best of what?"

"Whatever you call yourself. You're not human. Yet you are. You sucked my blood out of my body, took it into your own. You're thriving on it now. Surely you're not the only one." He looked away. "Vampires," he said. "I saw ghosts when I was a boy in our house in New Orleans."

"Everybody in New Orleans sees ghosts."

He laughed in spite of himself, a very short, quiet laugh. "I know," he said, "but really I did and I have, and I've seen them in other places. But I never believed in God or the Devil or Angels or Vampires or Werewolves, or things like that, things that could affect fate, or change the course of some chaotic-seeming rhythm that governed the universe."

"You believe in God now?"

"No. I have the sneaking suspicion that I'll hold firm as long as I can in this form—like all the ghosts I've ever glimpsed—then I'll start to fade. I'll die out. Rather like a light. That's what's waiting for me. Oblivion, And it isn't personal. It just feels that way because my mind, what's left of it, what's clinging to the earth here, can't comprehend anything else. What do you think?"

"It terrifies me either way or any way." I was not going to tell him about the Stalker. I was not going to ask him about the statue. I knew now he had had nothing to do with the statue seeming animate. He had been dead, going up.

"Terrifies you?" he asked respectfully. "Well, it's not happening to you. You make it happen to others. Let me explain about Dora."

"She's beautiful. I'll... I'll try to look out for her."

"No, she needs something more from you. She needs a miracle."

"A miracle?"

"Look, you're alive, whatever you are, but you're not human. You can make a miracle, can't you? You could do this for Dora, it would be no problem for a creature of your abilities at all!"

"You mean some sort of fake religious miracle?"

"What else? She's never going to save the world without a miracle and she knows it. You could do it!"

"You're remaining earthbound and haunting me in this place to make a sleazy proposition like this!" I said. "You're unsalvageable.

You are dead. But you're still a racketeer and a criminal. Listen to yourself. You want me to fake some spectacle for Dora? You think Dora would want that?"

He was flabbergasted, clearly. Much too much so to be insulted.

He put the glass down and sat there, composed and calm, appearing to scan the bar. Looking dignified and about ten years younger than he had been when I killed him. I don't guess anyone wants to come back as a ghost except in beautiful form. It was only natural. And I felt a deepening of my inevitable and fatal fascination, this, my Victim. Monsieur, your blood is inside me!

He turned.

"You're right," he said in the most torn whisper. "You're absolutely right. I can't make some deal with you to fake miracles for her.

It's monstrous. She'd hate it."

"Now you're talking like the Grateful Dead," I said.

He gave another litde contemptuous laugh. Then with a low sombre emotion, he said, "Lestat, you have to take care of her ... for a while,"

When I didn't answer, he persisted gently:

"Just for a little while, until the reporters have stopped, and the horror of it is over; until her faith is restored, and she's whole and Dora after all, and back to her life. She has her life, yet, She can't be hurt because of me, Lestat, not because of me, it's not fair."

"Fair?"

"Call me by my name," he said. "Look at me."

I looked at him. It was exquisitely painful. He was miserable. I didn't know whether human beings could express this same intensity of misery. I actually didn't know.

"My name's Roger," he said. He seemed even younger now, as though he were traveling backwards in time, in his mind, or merely becoming innocent, as if the dead, if they are going to stick around, have a right to remember their innocence.

"I know your name," I said. "I know everything about you, Roger. Roger, the Ghost. And you never let Old Captain touch you; you just let him adore you, and educate you, and take you places, and buy you beautiful things, and you never even had the decency to go to bed with him."

I said those things, about the images I'd drunk with his blood, but without malice. I was just talking in wonder of how bad we all are, the lies we tell.

He said nothing for the moment.

I was overwhelmed. It was grief veritably blinding me, and bitterness and a deep ugly horror for what I had done to him, and to others, and that I had ever harmed any living creature. Horror.

What was Dora's message? How were we to be saved? Was it the same old canticle of adoration?

He watched me. He was young, committed, a magnificent semblance of life. Roger.

"All right," he said, the voice soft and patient, "I didn't sleep with Old Captain, you're right, but he never really wanted that of me, you see, it wasn't like that, he was far too old. You don't know what it was really like. You might know the guilt I feel. But you don't know later how much I regretted not having done it. Not having known that with Old Captain. And that's not what made me go wrong. It wasn't that. It wasn't the big deception or heist that you imagine it to be. I loved the things he showed me. He loved me. He lived two, three more years, probably because of me. Wynken de Wilde, we loved Wynken de Wilde together. It should have turned out different. I was with Old Captain when he died, you know. I never left the room. I'm faithful that way when I am needed by those I loved."

"Yeah, you were with your wife, Terry, too, weren't you?" It was cruel of me to say this, but I'd spoken without thinking, seeing her face again as he shot her. "Scratch that, if you will," I said. "I'm sorry. Who in the name of God is Wynken de Wilde?"

I felt so utterly miserable. "Dear God, you're haunting me," I said. "And I'm a coward in my soul! A coward. Why did you say that strange name? I don't want to know. No, don't tell me—This is enough for me. I'm leaving. You can haunt this bar till doomsday if you want. Get some righteous individual to talk to you."

"Listen to me," he said. "You love me. You picked me. All I want to do is fill in the details."

"I'll take care of Dora, somehow or other, I'll figure some way to help her, I'll do something. And I'll take care of all the relics, I'll get them out of there and into a safe place and hold on to them for Dora, until she feels she can accept them."

"Yes!"

"Okay, let me go."

"I'm not holding you," he said.

Yes, I did love him. I did want to look at him. I did want him to tell me everything, every last little detail! I reached out and touched his hand. Not alive. Not human flesh. Something with vitality, however.

Something burning and exciting.

He merely smiled.

He reached across with his right hand and clamped his fingers around my right wrist and drew near. I could feel his hair touching my forehead, teasing my skin, just a loose wisp of hair. Big dark eyes looking at me.

"Listen to me," he said again. Scentless breath.

"Yes... ."

He started talking to me in a low, rushed voice. He began to tell me the tale.