The Hunger (11 page)

Behind them the ancient villa fades gracefully into mist and past times.

It is slow going along the unrepaired roads. They must not approach Ravenna, not at any cost. Two women in a carriage loaded with baggage and gold coins are as vulnerable as it is possible to be.

“Constantinople,” Miriam says, thinking of the boat waiting at Rimini and the terrors of the sea. Lollia huddles against her.

Before her she saw a dark wooden wall. She was in the ship, hearing the wind shrieking in the rigging, hearing —

A pigeon coo.

Her eyes opened. She did not move at first. Then she remembered, she was in the attic. Her mouth was dry, the dream clinging like a rotten flavor. She sat up. Close beside her was the new steel chest.

She hated these dreams. They did not interfere with renewal; indeed, they might be part of it. But they hurt so very much.

Well, she’d have to put it out of her mind. She had a great deal to do. She had been methodically preparing for Alice’s transformation. It had taken all year to sift through the literature of sleep disturbance and aging research until she had pinpointed the most knowledgeable person in the field.

Her approach to Sarah Roberts was to have been subtle and slow. Over time she would have befriended her, made Sarah’s knowledge her own, then slipped out of her life as easily as she had entered.

She had never expected John to die so soon. Even after transformation Alice would have grown to maturity. The three of them were to have shared those years.

But no more. Alice
had
to last, Miriam could bear nothing less. She ran her fingers through her hair. With the coming of the sun this little room under the eaves turned into an oven.

Miriam left, taking care to cross the attic on the beams so that the ceilings under her feet would not creak. While John was still strong she could not afford to let him know where she Slept. He felt cheated and betrayed; they always did. The next time his fingers might well close around her throat for good.

As soon as she opened the door to the attic she knew that he was home from another hunt. From their bedroom came a rasping sound that tore at her heart. He was crying. His intelligence, his sweetness, his exuberance — and above all the truth of his love — remained as alive as if the old John still existed. As she entered the room he fell heavily, thudding against the wall.

He began to pull himself up on the dressing-table chair. She watched the wheezing struggle appalled — he had weakened badly in these past hours. The gray skin was cracked, the hands reminded her of the claws of an animal.

His eyes, yellow and watery, sought her. He looked at her. She could hardly bear his face. “I’m hungry,” said a screeching, unfamiliar voice.

She could not reply.

He managed to pull himself to his full height and stood swaying like a hobbled buzzard. His mouth opened and closed with a crackling sound. “Please,” he said, “I’ve got to eat!”

Without the Sleep their hunger became unendurable. The flawless pattern of life was broken, and the delicate balance crumbled.

“John, I don’t understand this, I never have.”

He leaned toward her, gripping the chair tightly. She was relieved to see that he dared not launch himself in her direction. It was unlikely that he could hurt her, but not completely impossible. She preferred distance between them. Her control of any situation had to be flawless. “But you
knew
! You knew it would happen!”

There was no point in lying, the truth was obvious.

“You must help me. You must!”

She was unable to look at the accusation in those eyes. Before the truth of what she had done she could not find words, either of comfort or denial. She was lonely and human beings gave her the love that pets give. She sought companionship, some warmth, the appearance of home. She rejected her tears, her shame at what she had done to him. After all, did she not also deserve some love?

John had heard her from the first moment she had moved. The fact that she had been Sleeping in the attic locked away from him decided it. For him it was a surprisingly cool decision and it admitted no room for reconsideration. He was going to hurt her. He was going to take her throat in his hands and crush it until she admitted the evil of what she had done.

He watched her come warily into the room and feigned weakness, pretending to fall against a table. It was clear that she wouldn’t come near him if she thought that there was the least danger. Miriam was obsessively cautious.

He was agonizingly hungry. Miriam was so healthy and beautiful, literally ablaze with life — what would happen if he took her? Would it be enough to cure him? Her odor was dry and lifeless, like a starched dress. She did not have that wonderful, rich smell that John had come to identify with food.

Maybe she was poison.

His anger poured out in everything he said to her, he could not prevent it. She told him she did not understand what was happening to him. He wanted to believe that she was a passionless monster. He tried not to think of her as human. But he loved her, and now he needed her. Why wouldn’t she understand that?

He stretched out his arms, pleading for help.

She moved back toward the door, the silken gesture of a cat. Her eyes regarded him as if there was something she was about to say. He realized how great the gulf between them had really been all these years.

“I’m dying, Miriam.
Dying!
Yet you go gliding along, perfect and untouched. I know you’re much older than me. Why are you different?”

Now her face clouded, she seemed about to cry. “John, you
invited
me into your life. Don’t you remember?”

This was too much. He launched himself toward her, growling his rage, his arms extended toward her neck. Miriam had always been able to move fast, and she slipped away easily, retreating to the hallway. On her lips was a sad half-smile. The one thing that gave him hope was her eyes. They were glazed with fear, swimming with what could only be sorrow. As he approached her she turned, quick as a bird.

He heard her feet drumming down the stairs, then the front door slammed.

He was desolated. She had left him. Now he regretted his attack. Yet he hadn’t been able to stop himself, the urge was so sudden. Sooner or later she was bound to come back, though. She couldn’t bear to Sleep in hotel rooms for fear of an intruder or a fire. This place was so thoroughly equipped that a match couldn’t smoulder without being noticed, nor a burglar touch a window. No, this was her haven and she would return.

John would be waiting.

For fifteen minutes he lay on the bedroom floor trying to reach Sleep. But the hunger was there, insinuating itself into his veins, making him tremble with need.

He pulled himself to his feet and went downstairs, paused at the door to the library. Books and papers were strewn about. Miriam was normally obsessed with order. He slumped down behind her desk, thinking that he might prolong his strength if he didn’t move so much. It was going to be damned difficult if he had to eat in broad daylight, and in this condition.

There was a magazine lying open on the desk.
The Journal of Sleep Disorders
. Some project of Miriam’s. It was laughable, Miriam’s silly faith in science. The magazine was opened to an article with the wildly exciting title of “Psychomotor Dysfunction in Abnormal Dreaming Response: The Etiology of ‘Night Terrors of Adulthood,’” by S. Roberts, MD, PhD. The article was an utterly meaningless mass of statistics and charts, interspersed with sentences in the incomprehensible language of technology. How Miriam managed to make anything of such material was a mystery to John, and what she expected to do with it was just as obscure. Science, which so involved and excited her, seemed fearful to him, the work of the mad.

John pushed the magazine aside, staring blankly. He had begun to hear a sound, a sort of high-pitched noise like a siren. It was a moment before he realized that it was coming from inside his right ear. It peaked and then died. In its wake was nothing: the ear had become deaf. He had to act, the deterioration was now very rapid.

He went to the daybed, a place where he had Slept many times, and lay down. He closed his eyes. At first there was bone-tired relief. Again he did not Sleep. Instead, bright geometrical shapes began to appear before his eyes. These resolved into burning images of Miriam’s face, of Miriam standing over him during the agonizing time of his transformation.

His eyes opened almost of their own accord. Other faces had been about to replace Miriam’s.

The sound of a raging crowd evaporated into the soft morning air. Where, after all, do the dead go? Nowhere, as Miriam said — or is there a world beyond life, a world of retribution?

“You can’t blame me,” he growled.

He was surprised to hear a voice answer.“I’m not! You can’t help it if they forgot!” Alice.

John turned his head. She stood frowning, her violin case in her hand. She was here for her music lesson. Her odor, rich beyond description, poured into the room. “Good morning,” John said as he clambered to a sitting position on the side of the daybed.

“I do music with the Blaylocks at ten. But they’re gone.”

She did not recognize him.

“Yes, yes — they had some kind of a bank meeting. They told me — told me to tell you.”

“You must be the Vienna Philharmonic musician. My dad told me about you.”

He got to his feet, went to her, bowed. He dared not touch her, dared not even brush his hand against her. The hunger had become an inferno the instant he had caught scent of her. He had never experienced so much concentrated need, had never wanted anything so badly.

“Are you a regular with the Vienna Philharmonic?”

“Yes.” His hands shook, he clutched them together to keep from grabbing her.

“What’s your instrument?”

Careful here. He couldn’t say cello because she might ask him to play. It was completely beyond his capacity in this condition. “I play — french horn.” There, that was good.

“Heck, I was hoping you were strings.” She looked at him with her soft, intense eyes. “Strings are a lot of fun. They’re hard, though. Do you have your horn?”

“No — no, I prefer it does not travel. The tone, you know.”

She glanced away. “Are you all right?” she asked in a small voice.

“Of course,” he said. But he did not feel all right, he felt like splitting her in two.

“You look so old.” Her voice was low and hesitant. The knuckles of the hand gripping the violin case were white.

John tried to lick his lips, realized that they were stretched dry. The faces of other children swam into his memory. Miriam had insisted he take them when he was a beginner because they were easier. In those days homeless, unknown children were commonplace.

Taking human life had slowly lost its significance for him. He no longer remembered the number of murders he had committed. She had sucked every cell of humanity out of him and left him as he was today, at the end of his life with this to face.

“Have a seat,” he heard his voice say, “we’ll talk music until they get back.”

His hand touched the scalpel in his pocket the instant she accepted his invitation and came through the door.

That was all he needed, he was on her. Screams exploded from her, echoing flatly through the house. Her lithe body writhed, her hands tore at him, she slapped at the cracked skin of his face.

He pulled at the scalpel, twisting her hair in one hand, yanking her along the floor. Her arms windmilled, her feet scraped and banged. Her screams were high pitched, frantic, incredibly loud.

The damn scalpel wouldn’t come out of his pocket.

She managed to bite his arm, her teeth crunching out a half-moon-shaped hole in the loose skin.

Her eyes rolled when she saw the damage she had done. A column of black vomit shot from her mouth, splattering on the floor. She threw herself back and skittered along, trying to reach the door. He leaped at her, finally ripping the scalpel from his pocket. Everything except the hunger disappeared from his consciousness. His mouth opened, he could already taste her. It took all of his strength not to gnash his teeth like a famished dog. She was on her back, pushing herself away with her feet. He grabbed her ankle, held it with all the strength he could find. She sat forward and began batting at his hand.

He drove the scalpel down behind her collarbone. The pain threw her head back and made her shriek wildly. Then he was lying on top of her. Her breath rushed out of her lungs with a
whoosh
. She lay jerking in shock, her tongue lolling, eyes growing filmy.

With his mouth wide he covered the wound. He probed with his tongue. It hurt, it always did. Unlike Miriam’s, his soft human tongue was not adapted to this.

After what seemed an endless amount of probing, the blood burst from the vein, filling him at last. He sucked hard, lingering until the last drop. Only when there was nothing left but a dry rattling did he stop. His body felt loose and easy now, his mind was clearing. It was like waking up from a nightmare, or like the time as a boy when lost on the dark North Yorks Moors he had finally discovered a familiar path. He sighed deeply, then washed out his mouth with a glass of Madeira from the library stock. The wine seemed to contain a million delicious flavors, and he sensed each one individually. It was so beautiful he wept. His hands went to his face, feeling the softening skin and the warmth. He lay back on the daybed again and shut his eyes. The wine had been a fitting complement. Unlike other food, alcohol remained delicious to him. He tried to relax, savoring the immense relief.

Alice, as serene as a goddess, appeared behind his closed eyes.

It was so real that he shouted. He jumped up from the daybed. A sweet scent filled the room. It was every beautiful memory he had ever known, every kind voice, every loving touch.

He remembered when he was fourteen, waking on a summer’s morning at Hadley House, knowing that he would meet Priscilla on the other side of the lake as soon as she had served morning tea to himself and his parents.

He remembered the humid woods, the swans in the lake and wildflowers. There was a hurting, queasy tickle when she touched him. By now she was dust beyond dust.