Blood Sacrifice (21 page)
2004
Maria stirs beneath the deep red blanket, its heavy damask over her head; it’s like someone has lain a rug or tapestry overtop her. Heavy. But she’s used to it. It blocks out all light, and that’s what she was looking for when she bought it many, many years ago, from a vendor in an open-air marketplace in Venice. How things have changed since then.
She has a vague, uncomfortable feeling, as if someone is pounding on the front door downstairs. It makes her twist and turn in her half-sleep, cursing her handicap, cursing being unable to move when she needs freedom. But to move from outside the darkness would mean death.
It’s not really knocking anyway that’s making her anxious. The metaphor, though, is apt. Someone is trying to get in touch with her and she thinks it’s Elise. Her senses will be more attuned once darkness falls, once she can bring a pipe to her lips, inhale, and transfer the fog in her brain to her lungs, leaving her alert and open.
But she feels vague distress. She is unable to pinpoint the particulars, and this inability makes it impossible for her to rest. She senses there has been harm. She senses a need.
She turns over on her back, then her side. Terence is next to her, still and unmoving. She wants to strike him. She needs someone to share in this agony of not knowing.
After what seems like days, the room darkens. The shadows move under the damask coverlet and penetrate it, much as sunlight penetrates the mornings of mortals. Maria gets out of her bed, not waiting for the familiar stirring of Terence and Edward. She hurries to the window, where the traffic is rushing by like a river of neon-eyed monsters.
She doesn’t really get messages, not in verbal form anyway. This kind of communication is beyond words. But if she had to do a crude translation, what she would hear are these bald phrases:
I made a mistake.
I need you.
I have been hurt badly.
Come to me.
I want to be with you for all time.
Maria hurries to dress, her clothing practical tonight, with no nods to the romantic. A black blouse, Levis, black boots. She pulls her hair back into a chignon and pauses only to take a deep breath of smoke just before she exits. There is a pipe and a bag on a small table near the front door for precisely this purpose.
She walks into the chill, damp night air, sending comfort.
I will be with you soon.
I will take care of everything.
I will give you the love and nurturing you need.
I rejoice that you will be with me.
2004
Idly, Elise sits at her drawing board, a piece of Vellum Bristol taped to its surface. She is trying to stop herself from sketching, but she can’t. Every time she tries to pull her hand back, in which she holds a charcoal pencil, it’s almost as though an invisible force puts it back.
The drawing is detailed. In it, she is lying on the floor of the parking garage, one hand held up in mute defense. Her attacker stands over her, shadowy save for enormous arms and penis, both drawn with quick, hard, and deep strokes, almost cutting through to the surface of the board below. The drawing ignites the horrible memory, which is playing on endless loop in her mind, despite her best efforts to block it out.
She has listened to music: the entire score of Prokofiev’s
Romeo and Juliet
ballet. She has sorted through piles of whore clothes, stuffing the skirts, the bustiers, the short shorts, the leather pants, the fishnet stockings, spike-heeled shoes, crotchless panties, push-up bras into bags, all headed for the Dumpster outside. She has even run in place until she pants for breath and her body is slick with sweat. None of it makes the memory go away.
She has the idea that confronting it might make it vanish, hence the drawing. But the painstakingly rendered drawing at her fingertips only makes the memory more real, so real she trembles, and feels sick. But something will not let her stop.
As her room grows darker, she senses reassuring messages coming from Maria. The messages wrap her in a kind of warmth and make the memory disappear for an instant at a time. Not enough. She wonders how much will be enough.
She senses Maria is on her way, knows that soon, her life (death?) will be changing.
Scratch, scratch, scratch on the paper: his face is clear, the jaundiced eyes with their brown irises so black the pupils are lost in them, the wide nose, bent slightly to the left, the full lips and the front teeth with the gap. The drawing would be an excellent resource for police detectives, if she had the nerve or desire to contact the CPD.
Why can’t she stop drawing?
Why can’t she simply wait at her window, intent on the comforting vision of Maria pulling up in front of her building, come to claim her, come to rescue her from a life that is suddenly filled with only pain and degradation.
She sketches her mouth in an O,
à la
Munch. She takes care to draw her eyes, wide and almost bulging in terror, in anticipation of the pain she knows is on its way.
Why can’t she simply put the pencil down? Is it because she knows she may never be able to draw like this again? Is it because, even though it’s painful, this creation is the only thing keeping her alive?
She draws shadows. A gallery of rats in the corner of the garage, their tiny eyes glowing out of the darkness, bearing gleeful witness to her torment. In one corner a bat hangs down, its fangs dripping something dark and clotted. Snakes slither along the floor.
Monsters, all monsters. Except for her, at the center of things, the damsel in distress.
The symbolism tears at her. She tears the drawing up and scatters it on the floor, tearful and panting. Maria will be here any second, to take her away, to bring her down into a darkness that’s safe and nurturing.
Is that possible?
Is what she’s contemplating just another way to kill herself? A wild, romantic alternative to slitting her wrists and crawling in a warm bathtub, where her blood will seep out, turning the water crimson?
Of course not, she cannot believe that.
I am almost there
.
Elise moves to the window and peers out at the night. A homeless woman pushes a shopping cart down the street, its wheel squeaking, almost drowning out her on-key rendition of “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.” Her voice is surprisingly clear, a whispered soprano, not suited for the song at all, but makes the song’s message—about obsessive love—all the more poignant. Elise watches her hobble down the street; the music fades, and finally disappears when the woman vanishes into an alley, probably to discover what edible treats the Dumpsters there hold for her.
Her head aches.
Maybe I should give this more time.
The memory assaults her, twisting her gut.
I have to go.
She sits down suddenly in front of her stereo receiver and tunes it to a news station. Voices. She hasn’t yet tried voices to block out the rapid-fire imagery with which her brain seems intent on torturing her.
Is it providence that makes the weather report end and the next news item to come up just as Elise tunes in? Normally, a grisly story like the one that follows the weather (fog, 70% chance of rain through the night) would cause her to snap the radio off. But the report makes her listen closer with a mounting sense of dread.
The story concerns Alicia Majors, a fourteen-year-old Senn High School honor roll student whose parents had reported her missing. Elise cringes when she hears the girl’s body had to be identified through dental records, because “the teenage girl’s skin had been flayed, leaving only muscle and bone exposed.” Elise stuffs a fist to her mouth when she hears “nearly all of the girl’s blood had been drained from her body.” She stares out the window desolate, as the story winds up with phrases like, “evidence of sexual assault” and “the last to have seen Alicia alive.” Elise closes her eyes and stops breathing when the announcer finally says, “authorities are looking for a tall, Caucasian male on a motorcycle. Classmates report seeing Alicia leave with this man. Anyone having further information should—”
Elise snaps the radio off, doing it quickly, then rushes to the bathroom to throw up what little she had in her stomach, mostly yellow bile.
After she rides out the heaves, she stands to look at her face in the mirror above the sink. Her eyes are bloodshot (she wonders if the force of her vomiting has caused blood vessels to rupture) and tearing. Her skin is flushed.
All of this due to being alive. Due to blood.
Blood that not even the dead Alicia Majors possessed any longer.
It is then the knock at her door comes. Soft, almost a tapping. It is then she feels the force of Maria, her monstrously beautiful face rising up in her mind’s eye, her delicate, near skeletal limbs outstretched to embrace her.
Elise sinks down onto the cool of the tile floor, her eyes no longer wet from being sick, but wet from tears. She sobs as the knocking grows louder and more insistent. How long does she listen? Is it hours? She feels like a betrayer, but she cannot bring herself to get up and answer her door, not even to stop the knocking that makes her jump and start sobbing harder with each set of poundings.
She knows Maria will not come inside. Elise knows she has to invite her…and she isn’t so sure that decision would be so wise, after all.
*
Maria knocks one final time, even though she knows it’s useless. Her knuckles are raw. What has it been? Twenty minutes? It seems longer.
Maria slides down to the floor outside Elise’s apartment and sits on the dirty floor, covered in carpeting so filthy no color can describe it. What should she do? She knows Elise is inside. Her warmth and her scent filter out. She smells the soap, the flesh, and even the blood pulsing underneath. She lowers her head between her knees and stares at the floor.
Of course, she’s concerned. She knows Elise is alive, but wonders what kind of shape she’s in, considering the pained and panicked tenor of the thoughts she sent out earlier. She is afraid Elise can’t come to the door. What she fears more, though, is that she
won’t
.
What really scares her is that she’s lost Elise. What really scares her is that she won’t answer twenty minutes of insistent pounding. And what terrifies her is that there is no answer to the thoughts she has sent. Behind the closed door is a deliberate psychic silence. Maria can’t bear the thought Elise may have changed her mind and is ignoring her.
Wearily, she stands once more and raises her hand to knock.
No. It’s no good.
She wishes she could go inside, but she needs to be invited. It’s one of those traditions the folklore got right. If she can go in, she can at least see if Elise is all right. She shrugs and her head droops. She frowns as she descends the short staircase to the vestibule. Maria can’t believe it’s possible to sting with this much pain. She thought she left this part of humanity behind centuries ago. She has lived as a hedonist, existing only for herself and her pleasure. She hasn’t counted on falling in love, the ups and downs the emotion could cause. She knows why she has not pursued any attachments for so many years: this pain is insufferable; it is one from which even the living dead have no immunity.
In the glaring, fluorescent-lit vestibule, Maria leans heavily on the steel-framed glass door to push her way out into the night. The door swings behind her, but doesn’t latch. She wonders how long the lock has gone unrepaired and if the owners of this building have any concern for its occupants. Probably not, but she does.
She walks by the front of the building and turns the corner. She gives a glance up to the window that opens into Elise’s apartment and stops. Elise’s face, tired, pale, and almost ghostly, gazes down. Their eyes meet for an instant and, with the connection, Maria experiences a jolt. She is just about to reach up and even begins to lift her hands toward the window when Elise moves back quickly from it.
Maria stops, stunned and embarrassed. She looks behind her to see if anyone has seen. She wants to cry out to Elise, but knows what statement her quick movement away from the window made. It is as much a rejection as if she has shouted, as if she has physically pushed her away.
Maria wants to cry. She feels confused. Despair and rejection are emotions she has not experienced in so long they feel odd, strange, almost a physical twinge. She surmises Elise assumed Maria has not seen her; the apartment is pitch dark and her movement away from the glass almost instant. Elise, though, hadn’t counted on the abilities Maria has honed over many years to capture quick movement and to see into darkness.
For a moment, she wants to turn around and go back, pound on the door and demand to be let in. But she shakes her head and continues walking east on Howard Street. Yes, she felt nearly human for a few moments, but she never lost her dignity.
As she walks, her pace picks up, and she finds herself running. What is this dampness on her face? She pushes angrily at the tears, bringing her hands away smeared with blood.
Never again will she let anyone get close to her.
She stops when she can go no farther, when the broad, dark expanse of Lake Michigan stretches out before her. She stands alone on a beach and lets herself cry. She should have known this idea of love, this silly idea, was doomed.
Maria wishes she could walk into the silver-capped waves and disappear. She wishes she had never seen Elise…or her art.
2004
The boy hadn’t put up much of a fight. It seemed they never did, anymore. Not since Tina had swooped into town and swept up Halsted Street, leaving death, despair, and a trail of broken promises in her wake.
The small pink plastic bag is still in Edward’s pocket, the bottom and corner still retaining small shards of a whitish powder that resembles Drano. The bag had contained an eight ball of Tina, or crystal methamphetamine, if one wanted to get technical. Once upon a time, a little of his powerful reefer had been enough to lure the boys and dull their senses, but now crystal meth, affectionately referred to as Tina, was what the boys craved. Edward could buy a bag from a dealer on Cornelia Street, just off Halsted (also known as Boystown because of its preponderance of gay establishments, including several bars, a bathhouse, and a handful of adult bookstores). Proffering it around in the bars, he was suddenly like the Pied Piper; so many would follow him for a quick snort or two. This “poor man’s cocaine,” fashioned from ephedrine, drain cleaner, and other toxins, had taken a death grip on young and old in the gay community, in Chicago and across the nation. Edward had never seen a drug spike so rapidly in popularity. He was immune to its charms himself, which made it the perfect candy to lure little boys into his car, so to speak.
And he had used it tonight. Not only was his body craving fresh blood, but he needed to get away from Terence and Maria, both feeling their own personal anguish over Elise, and what needed to be done about her. He hadn’t told them about their lakeside encounter. His trip out to the rainbow-pylon-lined street where many of Chicago’s gay men congregated was to numb himself, to obliterate the thoughts from his mind about what should be done about Elise. He knew well enough what must be done, and didn’t want to think about it. He saw the road in front of him as the watershed in his life as one of the undead, a capper that stood for everything vile and ugly regarding what he was.
So when dusk lowered its purple curtain, Edward arose from the big canopy bed the three of them shared and knew where he had to go. It was a Friday night, and Halsted Street would be crowded with revelers, celebrating the beginning of another weekend. The weather had gotten warmer and the humidity had dropped, ensuring there would be an even bigger crowd than usual tonight. Edward often thought of going to Halsted as fishing in a barrel, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t looking for a challenge.
After fortifying himself with a bowl of prime sinsemilla, that he had nurtured himself into reddish, sticky, and redolent buds in the basement of their house, he dressed for his evening out. Lately, it seemed the leather boys were the ones who were most willing to do whatever it would take to acquire the company of Miss Tina, so tonight, Edward pulled on skin-tight, faded Levi 501s (the crotch carefully abraded with sandpaper to boost its prominence), a studded leather harness showing off his defined pectorals to scandalous advantage, a pair of Harley Davidson motorcycle boots, and a leather biker cap pulled low on his brow, hiding his eyes and making his five o’clock shadow and full lips look anonymous, menacing, and irresistible. Years of practice had taught him what worked and what didn’t when one was out hunting. He could never have imagined being dressed as he was tonight and, even more, going out in public in this costume, back when he was alive. Back then, in the 1950s, he supposed there were people with leather fetishes, but you didn’t find them parading up and down brightly lit and traffic-clogged thoroughfares. Back then, Edward seldom even wore blue jeans when he went out, sticking with chinos, plaid shirts, or if he wanted to show off how artsy he was, garbed all in black (at least that much hadn’t changed; the goth boys still lingered here and there, especially around the alley entranceway to a bar called Neos on Clark Street; Edward had once hunted there, too).
His mind in a fog, Edward had set off into the night. Any thoughts of the pathetic mortal they had ensnared in their web and who was, right now, probably twisting and turning to free herself from its unrelenting bonds, were banished by the cloud of marijuana that had dulled the workings of his mind, weaving itself around the coiled pink structure of his brain. And his blood lust also played a major role in ensuring his thoughts were not bothered by what he saw as a betrayal of someone much like himself.
But he couldn’t think about that now, as he raised his arm to hail a cab, not when there was a drunken and lonely boy somewhere to seduce, his blood and semen waiting for their final spurts into Edward’s hungry mouth.
*
The boy, nothing more than a carcass now, lies at his feet. It’s hard to decipher what anyone might have seen in him. Edward nudges the body over on its stomach with the steel toe of his boot, so he doesn’t have to look at him. He would prefer to remember the boy when he was vibrant, when the blood pumping hot just beneath his skin gave his cheeks color, when his vibrant life force caused his eyes to shine.
Yes, that’s what I’ve spoiled,
Edward thinks. He remembers talking to the boy in a leather bar called The Brig, where the air was dense with smoke (both cigars and cigarettes), the music was trance, and all the video monitors played hardcore pornography: here a crowd of muscular brutes tied a lithe young man to a St. Andrew’s cross and took turns fucking him, while the boy stared dull-eyed at the camera; there a man dressed as a member of the Hell’s Angels fisted two other men, on either side of him, their legs in chains in leather slings… Film production had come so far since Edward had surreptitiously watched men wrestle one another wearing posing straps on black and white 8MM celluloid. Edward remembers:
The boy stands alone, in a corner. His bright, alert expression tells Edward he is new to this, and shy. He knows his attention will be welcome, and he knows the power his strong, cocky looks have. He’s done it so many times in the past, it is like a routine. The boy will be pliant, willing. And once he has Tina racing through his veins, he will be even more eager to be defiled. The boy has no idea how far defilement can go.
Edward establishes no one will be looking for the boy, at least not for a while (he is from Indianapolis and has slipped away for the weekend, telling his parents he was attending a collegiate football game at Northwestern University in Evanston). It doesn’t take long for Edward to ply him with drink, smoke, and drug and lead him to the confines of Steam, the strip’s bathhouse, where he bribes the clerk behind the glass entry window to give them a double room without the benefit of a membership card or even ID.
The drug, Edward’s compact, muscled physique, and his commanding manner all play into the boy’s wildest fantasies once they are alone in the room. Previously inexperienced, the boy becomes an insatiable whore under Edward’s tutelage, no limit too extreme. Or so the boy thinks.
The sex is rough, even by leather and S&M standards, but still nothing so far out of the ordinary as to cause any true pain. For their first hour or so, the accent truly is on pleasure. But Edward leads the boy on a climb through dizzying heights of perversion and pain, ratcheting up the slaps, the nipple twists, the sudden thrusting of fingers into rectum, until the boy has a chance to grow accustomed to each level. Edward has done this a million times. The boy is interchangeable with so many others.
Finally, the pain and pleasure are so intense, the boy doesn’t even have time to scream when Edward’s razor-sharp fangs pierce the tender flesh of his throat. Edward has the boy’s windpipe and vocal cords ripped out in an instant. No one passing by their room will imagine anything is amiss; there is more noise in any number of other rooms.
Back in the present, Edward pulls on his boots, and decides on a whim to leave his harness atop the boy’s back.
He pauses at the door, whispering goodbye, then presses his forehead to the cheap painted wood. “I should have killed her.” He nods. The knowledge, and the certainty, makes him feel sick, in spite of the fresh blood coursing through him, something that had once engendered in him a euphoria he had never imagined when he was alive. Now, it’s just another bodily function, like eating or taking a shit had once been, mundane and commonplace. Murder, torture, and the drinking of blood have little more allure than eating an apple. “I shouldn’t have killed this young man; I should have killed her, as I planned when I followed her from the house.” Edward shakes his head. He knows it has to be done. She can’t be allowed to live with her knowledge.