Blackwood Farm Part 8

"Correct, and they'll mull that over, and letters will be sent to the Elders, but I know perfectly well they can't harm us. And he and his cohorts won't come out here looking for you. They're too d.a.m.ned honorable. But you must tell me now, in case I've underestimated them, do you lie by day in a safe place?"

"Very safe," I said quickly. "On Sugar Devil Island, which they could never conceivably find. But surely you're right, Stirling will keep his promise not to come looking for me or seek me out. I believe in him utterly. That's why it's so ghastly that I almost hurt him, I almost took his life."

"And would it have been to the finish with him?" he asked. "Have you no self-control once you've begun?"

I was full of misery.

"I don't know what self-control I have. On the night of my making I committed a blunder, taking an innocent life --."

"Then that was your Maker's blunder," he retorted. "He should have been with you, teaching you."

I.

nodded.

"Let me dream that I would have broken off with Stirling, but I wasn't just frightened of him, frightened of him knowing about me, I was hungry for his death. I'm not sure how it would have gone. He was fighting me with an elegance of mind. He has that, an elegance of mind. Yes, I think I would have taken his life. It was tangled with my love for him. I would have been d.a.m.ned for it forever, and I would have found some way to put an end to myself right away. I'm d.a.m.ned for almost doing it. I'm d.a.m.ned for everything. I live, I live in a fatal frame of mind."

"How so? What do you mean?" he asked, but he wasn't surprised by what I'd said.

"It's as if I'm forever in the grip of Last Rites or dictating a Last Will and Testament. I died the night my Maker brought me over; I'm like one of the pathetic ghosts of Blackwood Manor who doesn't know he or she is dead. I can't come back to life."

He nodded, raising one eyebrow and then relaxing. "Ah, well, you know that argues much better for a long existence rather than recklessness and devil-may-care behavior."

"No, I didn't know," I said quickly. "What I know is that I have you here and you helped me with Goblin, and you see what Goblin can do. You see that Goblin has to be. . . has to be destroyed. And maybe me too."

"You haven't the smallest idea of what you're saying," he returned quietly. "You don't want to be destroyed. You want to live forever. You just don't want to kill to do it, that's all."

44.Now I knew that I was going to cry.

I took out my pocket handkerchief and I wiped at my eyes and my nose. I didn't turn away to do this. That would have been too cowardly. But I did look about me without moving my head, and when I looked back at him I thought, what a staggeringly beautiful creature he was.

His eyes alone would have done the trick, but he'd been gifted with so much more, the thick ma.s.sive blond hair, the large finely shaped mouth and an expression eloquent of comprehension as well as intelligence, and under the light of the gasolier he was the matinee idol drifting before me, carrying me out of myself into some unmeasured moment in which I relished his appearance as if he couldn't or didn't know.

"And you, my timeless one," he said in a soft sure voice with no hint of accusation in it, "I see you here in your exquisite setting of mirrors and gold, of human love and obvious patrimony, and robbed of it all in essence by some careless demon who's left you orphaned and uneasily, no, torturously, ensconced among the mortals you still so desperately need."

"No," I said. "I fled my Maker. But now I seek you out, and so I have you, even if just for this night, but I do love you, love you as surely as I love Aunt Queen, and Nash, and Goblin, yes, as much as I have loved Goblin, I love you. Forgive me. I can't keep it back."

"There is no forgiving," said Lestat. "Your head teems with images, and I catch them blinkering and crowding your brain as they seek a narrative, and so you must tell me, you must tell me all of your life, even what you think is not important, tell me all. Let it pour from you, and then we'll judge what's to be done with Goblin together."

"And me?" I asked. I was exuberant. I was crazed. "We'll judge what's to be done with me?"

"Don't let me scare you so much, Little Brother," he said in the kindest tone. "The worst thing I'd do to you is leave you --vanish on you as if we'd never met. And I don't think of that now. I think rather of knowing you, that I'm fond of you and have begun to treasure you, and your conscience shines rather bright for me. But tell me, haven't I failed you already? Surely you don't see me now as the hero you once imagined."

"How so?" I asked, amazed. "You're here, you're with me. You saved Stirling. You stopped a disaster."

"I wasn't able to destroy your beastly phantom," he said with an amiable shrug. "I can't even see him, and you've counted on me. And I threw the Fire at him with all I had."

"Oh, but we've only just started," I responded. "You'll help me with him, won't you? We'll figure it out together."

"Yes, that's precisely what we'll do," he responded. "The thing is strong enough to menace others, no doubt of it. If it can fight you as it did, it can attack others --that much I can tell, and that it responds to gravity, which for our purposes is a good sign."

"How so gravity?" I asked.

"It sucked the very air when it left you," he answered. "It's material. I told you. It has some chemistry in the physical world. All ghosts are material in probability. But there are those who know more of this than me. I only once saw a human ghost, talked to a human ghost, spent an hour with a ghost, and it terrified me quite out of my mind."

"Yes," I replied, "it was Roger, wasn't it, who came to you in the Chronicle called Memnoch the Memnoch the Devil Devil. I read how you talked with him and how he persuaded you to care for his mortal daughter, Dora. I read every word. I believed it; I believed that you saw Roger and that you went to Heaven and h.e.l.l."

"And well you should," he rejoined. "I never lied in those pages, though it was another that took the dictation of it. I have been with Memnoch the Devil, though what he really was --devil or playful spirit --I still don't know." He paused. "It's more than plain to me," he said, "that you've noticed the difference between my eyes."

"I'm sorry, I couldn't help it," I said quickly. "It isn't a disfigurement."

45.He made a gesture of dismissal along with a kind smile.

"This right eye was torn from me," he said, "just as I described it, by those spirits who would have prevented me from fleeing Memnoch's h.e.l.l. And then it was returned to me, here on Earth, and sometimes I believe that this eye can see strange things."

"What strange things?"

"Angels," he said, musing, "or those who call themselves angels, or would have me conclude that they're angels; and they have come to me in the long years since I fled Memnoch. They've come to me as I lay like one in a coma on the chapel floor of St. Elizabeth's, the building in New Orleans which was bequeathed to me by Roger's daughter. It seems my stolen eye, my restored eye, my bloodshot eye, has established some link with these beings, and I could tell you a tale of them, but now is not the time."

"They harmed you, didn't they?" I asked, sensing it in his manner. He nodded.

"They left my body there for my friends to watch over," he explained, and for the first time since I'd seen him, he looked troubled, indecisive, even faintly confused.

"But my spirit they took with them," he went on. "And in a realm as palpable as this very room they set me down to do their bidding, always threatening to s.n.a.t.c.h back this right eye, to take it forever if I didn't do what they bid me to do."

He hesitated, shaking his head.

"I think it was the eye," he said, "the eye which gave them the claim on me, the ability to reach down to me, in this realm, and take me --it was the eye, stolen in another dominion and then returned on Earth to its rightful socket. You might say that as they looked down from their lofty Heaven, if Heaven it is, they could see, through the mists of Earth, this bright and shining eye."

He sighed as if he were suddenly miserable. He looked at me searchingly.

"This wounded eye, this tarnished eye," he continued, "gave them their compa.s.s to find me, their opening, as it were, between the dominions, and down they came to enlist my spirit against my will."

"Where did they take you? What did they do?"

"Oh, if I only knew that they were Heavenly beings," he declared in a low pa.s.sionate voice. "If I only knew that Memnoch the Devil and those who came after him had shown me truths! It would all be a different matter and I could somehow save my soul!"

"But you don't know. They never convinced you," I pushed.

"How can I accept a world full of injustice, along with their august designs?"

He shook his head again and looked off and then down, as though searching for some spot for his focus, and then back to me as he went on.

"I can't entirely accept what I learned from Memnoch and those who came afterwards. I've never told anyone of my last spiritual adventure, though the others, the Blood Drinkers who love me --you know, my l.u.s.ty troop of beloveds, I call them that now, the Troop of Beloveds --they know that something happened, they sense it only too well. I don't even know which of my bodies was the true one --the body that lay on the floor of the chapel of St. Elizabeth's, or the body that roamed with the so-called angels. I was an unwilling trafficker in knowledge and illusions. The story of my last adventure, my secret unknown adventure, the adventure I haven't confided to anyone, weighs on my soul as if to make my spiritual breath die out."

"Can you tell me now of this adventure?" I asked.

It took a great sense of power in him, I thought, to look so readily abject, to show me such affliction.

"No," he said. "I haven't the strength for the telling of that story yet, that's the plain truth."

He shrugged and shook his head and then continued: 46."I need more than strength. I need courage for that confession, and right now my heart's warm from being with you. You have a story to tell, yes, or we have a story to live together. Right now my greedy heart is fastened to you."

I was overcome. I cried like a silent baby. I blew my nose and tried to remain calm. Blood on the handkerchief. Body of Blood. Mind of Blood. Flash of his eyes on me. Violet.

"I should take my good fortune," I said, "and not question it, but I can't resist. What's kept you from destroying me, from punishing me for coming into your flat, for doing what I did to Stirling? I have to know."

"Why do you have to know?" he asked, laughing softly. "Why is it so very important to know?"

I shook my head and shrugged my shoulders. I wiped at my eyes again.

"Is it vanity in me to press the question?" I asked.

"Probably," he said, grinning. "But shouldn't I understand? I, the most vain of creatures?" He chuckled. "Didn't you see me preening for your aunt downstairs?" I nodded.

"All right," he said. "Here comes the litany of reasons I didn't kill you. I like you. I like that you have a woman's lineaments and a man's body, a boy's curious eyes and a man's large easy gestures, a child's frank words and a man's voice, a blundering manner and an honest grace."

He smiled at me quite deliberately, and winked his right eye, and then went on.

"I like that you loved Stirling," he said. "I like that you honor your glorious Aunt Queen so candidly." He smiled mischievously. "Maybe I even like it that you went down on your knees and kissed her feet, though that gesture came rather late in the game of my deciding. I like that you love so many around you. I like it that you're more generous than I am. I like that you hate the Dark Blood, and that your Maker wronged you. Now --isn't that pretty? Isn't that enough?"

I was quietly delirious with grat.i.tude.

"Don't think it so very unselfish of me to be here," he went on, eyes widening, voice gaining a little heat. "It's not. I need you or I wouldn't be here. I need your need of me. I need to help you, positively need it. Come, Little Brother, carry me deep into your world."

"My world," I whispered.

"Yes, Little Brother," he said. "Let's proceed together. Tell me the history you inherited and the life you've lived. Tell me about this beastly and beguiling Goblin and how he has gained his strength. I want to hear everything."

"I'm in love with you," I responded.

He laughed the most beguiling and gentle laugh.

"Of course you are," he replied. "I understand perfectly because I'm in love with myself. The fact that I'm not transfixed in front of the nearest mirror takes a great deal of self-control."

It was my turn to laugh.

"But your love for me," he went on, "is the reason why you'll tell me all about yourself and Blackwood Farm. Start with the family history and then go into your own."

I sighed. I pondered. I took the plunge.

7.

"CHILDHOOD FOR ME INVOLVED two distinct polarities --being with Goblin, and 47.listening to adults talk.

"Goblin and I were the only children here at Blackwood Manor because the tourists who came almost never brought children with them, and so I soon learned the vocabulary of adults and that it was fun to play in the kitchen and listen to their endless storytelling and arguing, or to tag after the tour guides --my great-grandfather Gravier and later my grandfather Pops --as they went through the house detailing its riches and its legends, including the gloomy tale of Manfred, the Great Old Man.

"Great-grandfather Gravier was truly the very best at this, having a deep sonorous voice and being a dignified man in a black suit with a white silk tie to match his white shirt, but he was very old when I was little and he went away to a hospital and died there, before I was five I think, and I have no clear memory of his funeral. I don't think I went to his funeral. But he had made an indelible impression upon me.

"And he at once became a famous family ghost apparently, on the sole authority of my having come down the stairs one morning and seen him standing by the front door, smiling at me placidly and waving his right hand. He was gone in an instant.

"Everybody told me to stop telling such stories, Great-grandfather Gravier was in Heaven, and I must certainly know that, and we ought to light a candle for him before the Blessed Virgin on the little altar in the kitchen, which we did --which made a total of ten-odd candles burning on the little altar for various ancestors, rather like the altars one sometimes sees in Chinese laundries. And furthermore, it was said I shouldn't try to scare people.

"Nevertheless, during every house tour ever given by anyone at Blackwood Manor, the whole world of our paying guests was told about my having seen Great-grandfather Gravier.

"Pops, Gravier's only son and my grandfather, took up the job of guide with gusto after Gravier's death, and though Pops was far more plain-spoken and rough at the edges, he was a grand storyteller, nevertheless.

"Gravier had been a man of considerable accomplishment, in that he had practiced law for years and even served on the bench as a local judge. But Pops was a rural man who had no ambition beyond Blackwood Manor, and if that meant he had to talk to the guests, he did it.

"My grandmother Sweetheart sometimes was recruited, much against her will, as she was always up to her elbows in flour and baking powder, but she knew all the family legends, and, heavy as she was, looked very pretty in a fine black gabardine dress with a purple orchid corsage on her left breast and a string of pearls around her neck. She was one of those women who, inclined to embonpoint, have round smooth wrinkleless faces until they die.

"And then there was Jasmine, our beloved black housekeeper, whom you've met, who could in a twinkling change from her kitchen clothes to a sw.a.n.ky black skirt and leopard-skin blouse, along with spike heels of which Aunt Queen would have been proud, to take everyone from room to room, very properly adding to the concoction of tales that she herself had seen Great-great-grandfather William's ghost in his bedroom, front right, or across the hall from us, as well as the ghost of Great-great-greataunt Camille tiptoeing up the attic stairs.

"I don't know that you noticed Jasmine in her fancy red sheath tonight, but Jasmine has the figure of a model, rail thin with strong shoulders, and, with closets of loving cast-offs from Aunt Queen, she cuts a beautiful image as a tour guide, her pale green eyes positively flashing as she tells her earnest ghost stories and sighs before the portraits, or leads the expectant guests to the attic stairs.

"It was Jasmine's brilliant idea to include the attic in the usual tour, that is, to take the tourists right up and into it, instructing them to notice the delicious smell of the warm wooden rafters as they stood there, and to point out the fine steamer trunks and wardrobe trunks from earlier times, some open and heaped with furs and pearls rather like props for A Streetcar Named Desire A Streetcar Named Desire, and the wicker wheelchair in which Great-great-grandfather William had spent his last days on the lawn. The attic was --before my own inevitable raid upon it --a wilderness of rare and antique wicker, and tales devolved 48.around it all.

"Let me return to the big picture.

"The bed-and-board guests were always company and a bit of an inspiration to me, because they were often friendly and attractive --I tend to see most people as attractive until someone comes along and points out to me that they're not --and these people frequently invited me into their rooms, or wanted me to sit down at breakfast with them at the big table and chat about the Manor House, as we so pretentiously called it, and I warmed to all this friendship, and Goblin found it interesting because whenever I spoke to or of him, which was all the time, these guests thought Goblin the most intriguing thing in the world.

" 'So you have a little spirit friend!' one said triumphantly, as though she had discovered Confederate gold buried outside. 'Tell us about your little ghost,' said another, and when I petted or stroked Goblin while talking of him, he was very happy, indeed. He would flash on solid for a long time, and only sadly go transparent and then dissolve when he had to.

"I couldn't have done better had I been a paid performer whose sole occupation was to increase the mystery of Blackwood Farm. And I loved it. And then the guests kicked in their support of the mythology gratis, as I've explained, with all their sightings of the Old Man, Manfred, scowling in a mirror, or sweet Virginia Lee, roaming from room to room in search of her orphaned children.

"I learned from all this, from the endless variety with which the tales of our house were woven, and I learned from adults how to think and feel like an adult, and Goblin fed off the easy way in which he fitted into everything. And I came to think of myself from early on as being a maverick like the Old Man.

"Manfred, the Old Man, had come out to these parts in 1881 with a new bride, Virginia Lee. He had started out as a saloon keeper in the Irish Channel but gone on to make a fortune in merchandising in New Orleans, but could find no locale suitable to his visions of splendor and so was drawn north across Lake Pontchartrain to this open land.

"Here he found a parcel of real estate that is composed of high ground on which he could build a fabulous mansion, with servants' quarters, stables, terraces and pastures, plus two hundred acres of thick swamp in which he could hunt, and a charming abandoned cemetery with its sh.e.l.l of a stone church, a tribute to those whose families had long ago died out or decamped.

"Manfred sent his architects to the fine homes of Natchez to choose the very best of attributes for this mansion, and he supervised its Greek Revival style, circular stairs and hallway murals himself.

"All was for the love of Virginia Lee, who had a particular affection for the cemetery and sometimes went to the empty little stone church to pray.

"The four oak trees that guard the cemetery now were already well grown at that time, and the proximity of the old graveyard to the swamp with its greedy hideous cypress trees and endless tangles of Spanish moss no doubt added to, and adds to, the overall sense of melancholy.

"But she was no sappy Victorian girl, Virginia Lee. She had been an educated and devoted nurse to Manfred in a New Orleans hospital where he suffered a severe bout of Yellow Fever and, like many an Irishman, almost died of the disease. It was with great reluctance that she gave up her vocation to nurse the sick, but Manfred, being much older and very persuasive, successfully enchanted her.

"It was for Virginia Lee that Manfred had the portrait of himself painted, which is now hung in the parlor, and always was, as far as I know. He was in his forties when the portrait was painted, but he had already come to resemble a bulldog in some respects, with heavy jowls, an up-thrust obdurate mouth and large mournful blue eyes. He had thick gray hair by that time, circa 1885, and he still had a full head of it when Aunt Queen had her strange meeting with him some forty years later, when he gave her the cameos before he disappeared into the swamp.

"He doesn't look like a mean man in the portrait. In fact, I've always found the picture strongly compelling, and the man himself must have been lacking in vanity, that he allowed such an honest 49.portrait of himself to be hung in his house.