The Vines (16 page)

When Blake realizes his ears are ringing so loudly he won’t be able to hear the insects coming for him, he feels a swell of genuine panic he can’t ignore. He waits another few seconds for the ringing to lessen some; then he starts talking loud enough to hear himself over the din.

“You feed them your blood, you see. They drink from you, and then they devour the people who’ve hurt you the worst. My friend discovered them. And then she gave them my blood too, and they killed Mike Simmons and Kyle Austin and Scott Fauchier.”

“Why didn’t they kill me then?”

“I’d have to feed them again. It’s a cycle, you see. Which makes sense, after all. It’s a plant.”

“
That
is
not
a fucking
plant
.”

“I know.”

“Well . . . are you going to feed it?”

“No.”

Vernon takes his eyes off the slack vine for the first time since Blake pulled it from his chest. “Why not?”

“Because I’m not a murderer, Vernon.”

Vernon stands and walks to the spot where the vine has gone still.

“If it’s a cycle, how does it end?” he asks.

“There’s a price . . .”

“What kind of price?”

“Bugs.”

“Bugs?” Despite what he’s seen with the vine, Vernon can’t keep the skepticism out of his voice.

“After they kill, they leave a flower in place of the person’s body, and then the bugs come and they feed off it and it changes them. And then they come for the person who gave their blood.”

“And then what?”

“They tear them apart.”

“You’re out of your fucking mind, kid.”

“Shoot it again and then tell me I’m crazy. But look me in the eye when you say it.”

“So they’re coming for you? The
bugs
? They’re going to come
here
for
you
?”

“Something like that. Yeah.”

“You’ve seen this? You’ve
seen
this happen?”

“I’ve seen all of it.”

“And they’ll hurt me too?”

“No. It doesn’t work like that.”

Vernon is distracted by something at Blake’s feet, and Blake looks down and sees the vine has wrapped itself around his right ankle.

“Then what the fuck are you doing here?” Vernon asks.

“I wanted to give you a choice.”

“’Cause if I’d hurt you, then that thing—that thing will drink your blood and come after me . . .”

“Yes.”

When Blake looks up again, Vernon is holding the revolver’s handle out to him, and it takes a few seconds of stunned silence for him to realize the man is actually offering him his weapon.

Is he offering Blake the opportunity to kill him? Or is he trying to give him a chance to end his own life before a million winged terrors come for him?

Maybe both. But these questions lodge in his throat when he hears the sound he’s been dreading for over an hour now. Here on the bayou, dappled now with the gray light of early dawn, it would be far too easy to pretend it was just the whine of an approaching outboard motor, but Blake knows that isn’t true.

He turns to the walls of glass in time to see the great clouds swooping low over the tree line across the bayou. Two matching columns of dark, tumbling flecks barreling straight for the house. One instant they’re vivid against the gray sky; then they’re camouflaged by the backdrop of the surrounding foliage, even as their whine gets louder.

He can hear Vernon backing away, can hear the man’s shuffling, panicked footsteps squeaking against the floorboards.

“I said no,” Blake whispers.

He presses his hands to the glass. The clouds cross the water’s edge yards away, filling the gaps in between his fingers.

“I said no and you took my blood anyway!” he growls. Who is he praying to? He’s not sure. God? Virginie Lacroix? Vernon Fuller?

The whine is deafening now, as loud as it was in the moments before Caitlin was rocketed across the second-floor hallway of Spring House.

“I said no!”
Blake screams.

A tremendous force slams into the wall of sliding doors, shattering them in a single eruption powerful enough to send Blake skittering backward. But the hand he held against the glass when it was still intact is still out before him, bloodied, but still rigid and defiant, like a child’s attempt to stop an ocean wave. Blake forces his eyes open against the onslaught and sees the clouds have stopped their relentless assault. A thin finger of them reaches almost to the center of his palm, but nothing pricks the skin there, nothing touches his skin at all, and behind this buzzing tendril the clouds are branching off in different directions, a great swirl that extends from the lawn outside through the wall of shattered glass and into the living room.

Is it possible? Has he really staved them off with a single cry and an outstretched palm? Could Caitlin have done the same?

The cloud before him assumes a fibrous shape that is gaining human proportions. The noise they make is steadier and even-toned. Behind him, Vernon Fuller emits desperate panting that sounds almost sexual, if not for the terror pulsing through each one. And a few feet in front of Blake, a face appears out of the insect swarm in impressionistic brushstrokes.

Does the spirit driving these tiny creatures feel compelled to present some random face Blake will find knowable? Or is this monster about to reveal its true identity?

He has never seen a painting or a photograph of Virginie Lacroix. But it doesn’t matter, because the face swirling before him now is not hers. The high-domed forehead, the deeply recessed brow, the lips so fat they appear to be peeling free of his face—they are familiar features he’s stared up at in the foyer of Spring House since he was a small boy. Blake finds himself staring not at the visage of a murdered slave, but at the face of Spring House’s owner.

“Felix . . . ,” Blake whispers.

“Blake Henderson.”

33

The spirit’s voice is so loud it rattles Blake’s teeth and every other hard surface in the wrecked living room.

“Who are you?” Blake cries.

“My visage is not intended to deceive.”

“You’re really Felix Delachaise. You’re his—you’re his
ghost
?”

“I am what remains of him when he is called back to this plane again and again by the will of another.”

The whine of each insect forms a lone note in a monstrous symphony that rattles Blake’s bones. It feels as if he and Vernon are literally swimming in the spirit’s every word.

“Who brought you back? Caitlin?”

“You and Caitlin Chaisson are the tools, nothing more.”

“The tools for what?”

“My freedom. My existence consists of teasing glimpses of a realm of limitless possibility before I am returned again and again to the soil of this earthly plane, the soil beneath Spring House. There I am forced to endure the racket of human passion and rage. Ever since the death of my body, I have poked and prodded at your meager existences from my prison of spirit and blossoms, desperate for a way to unburden myself of my sins, so that I may move on.
Know this. It is not the living who are haunted by the dead—it is the dead who are haunted by the living.”

“I don’t understand. The will of another . . . whose will? Who keeps bringing you back?”

“Life, human life, is nothing but resistance to the infinite. All cells, all spirits, are without shelter, are without home, until they find a single will around which they may gather and take form. And as long as that will endures, there is life, even if it doesn’t wear a costume of flesh and bone. And so, as long as Virginie Lacroix’s will to walk this earth as a free woman endures, I am tasked with her resurrection. I am doomed to live as the slave to my slave.”

“All life?” Blake cries. “You’re saying anyone can be brought back if they didn’t want to die?”

“Those with magic in their hands do not die as easily as others might.”

Blake feels again the soft bed that was waiting for him at the bottom of the pit when he jumped into it to cut a segment of the vines free. A new growth, a new life, swelling up from the earth itself in response to the terrible events all around Spring House.

“We’re the tools you’re using to bring her back?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Betrayal is my sin. I used Virginie Lacroix’s powers for gain and refused to keep my promises to her in exchange. Her revenge caused my death and took prisoner of my spirit. But I was given new direction and new power by the blood of Caitlin Chaisson and the betrayal that ran through it. Her rage. This is the justice of the earth.”

“Rage? That’s the
essence
of life itself? Only rage?”

“All life? Perhaps not. Perhaps only the life I am able to create while trapped in this prison. The life I am able to create for Virginie.”

“But you stopped,” Blake says. “You just stopped. Why haven’t you taken me?”

The spirit doesn’t answer. The low whine from the surrounding insects could be their usual song or Felix’s frustrated growl; there’s no telling which.

“Where’s Caitlin?”

“What remains of Caitlin has gathered up the lives she needs to aid me in the resurrection. She has returned to Spring House to play her role.”

“And now it’s my turn to play mine? Is that it? You’ve come for me and then I’ll . . . what?”

“You will devour more of the sin that fed your rage, the same rage with which you fed the vines. And then you too will play your role in Virginie’s resurrection . . .”

“And your freedom, right? Because when you bring Virginie back to life, you’ll be free? Is that how this all works?”

There is no response from the clicking, shifting apparition, but there is no clearly etched facial expression to interpret either, so Blake takes the silence of this ghost as hesitation, a gap in the all-seeing divine knowledge it touted only seconds before.

“Fine!” Blake shouts. “Then do it! Do it now!”

And yet, the spirit is silent. The swirl of insects, not a single one of which touches his skin, now seems stuck in a kind of repetitive paralysis.

“You can’t. Why not? Why can’t you take me the way you took Caitlin?”

The spirit’s form is too impressionistic for Blake to read any emotion or nuance from its vague expression.

Vernon has collapsed in the far corner, a few feet from the Eames chair he knocked over as he stumbled backward. Squinting, his chest heaving, he sweeps the curtains of winged, otherworldly creatures with a swaying, indecisive aim.

“It matters,” Blake whispers. “The choice I made. That I said
no
. It matters, doesn’t it? It’s stopped you.”

“It has done more than that, I’m afraid.”

“What? What . . .
more
has it done?” Blake is answered by the grinding buzz, but not words. “Caitlin screamed bloody murder, but
she
couldn’t stop you. How come I can? What happened when you took my blood, my
rage
, without my consent?”

“It placed me under your command.”

Vernon aims the gun at Blake. A piss stain crawls down the right leg of his jeans.

“I want you to stop,” Blake says. “If you’re under my
command
now, then
stop
!”

“There is no stopping Virginie’s desire for freedom, and there is no freeing me from it until she is made flesh again. No matter what you choose, I will be returned to the soil, forced to await another opportunity to gain her freedom and mine, but with the knowledge I have acquired during this long night of consumption and enlightenment.”

“Why don’t you have enough? Why haven’t you . . .
enough
to bring her back? You killed all those people at the motel, didn’t you? That was part of this.”

“Caitlin’s rage killed those people.”

“They were cheaters, like Troy. Is that it?”

“She consumed the sin she sought to avenge. She is but one of my arms. She fed but one of my vines. You fed the other.”

“No. You did. You
stole
my blood, and now you’re being punished for it!”

“I am the prisoner of the vines, not their architect.”

For the first time since this sickening dialogue has begun, Blake lowers his outstretched hand and decides to put his alleged power to the test a second time. Under his command, the countenance of Felix Delachaise collapses, and within seconds the mass of insects has formed a smooth, undulating blanket covering the living room ceiling. It looks like smoke from a well-fed fire, but the constant grinding song of its indistinguishable components belies the soft texture of the swarm’s new configuration. A configuration that resembles exactly what Blake envisioned for it only seconds before.

Staring up at the blanket of insects overhead, Vernon seems to realize his gun will be useless against Blake’s newfound power, and when he lowers it to one side, the placid expression on his face reminds Blake of a patient who realizes she is close enough to death to abandon all fight.

“Do it, Blake.”

“No . . . ,” Blake says.

“Come on, kid,” Vernon answers. His smile makes him look delirious, and Blake wonders if this is the way Vernon used to talk to his son. He wonders if, in a part of his mind that’s already separated from the body he’s offering up now as sacrifice, Vernon really is talking to John. If that’s who he sees standing across the wrecked room from him now. “No need to pretend for my sake. I know you want to. And it makes sense, doesn’t it? It makes perfect sense to give me to the—”

“Shut up!”

“You were a hero once, Blake,” he says, shattering Blake’s cozy notion that Vernon no longer knows who he is. “You could have left him. You could have just started swimming, but you tried—you tried to get my son free before he drowned. You really loved him, didn’t you?”

“Stop . . . Please, just st—”

“Did you love him?”

“Yes!”

“I see . . . Well, I
didn’t
,” he growls, but there are tears sprouting from his eyes and a childlike quiver to his lower jaw, and Blake can see it’s just a performance. “I wanted him to die. I wanted you both to die.”

“That’s not true. You’re just saying that to make me—”

“It
is
true. I thought you were sick, both of you. I thought you were both diseased.” But there is no rage behind these words, just tearful despair.
“I wanted you both to die!”

Blake realizes he’s shaking his head madly only when his neck starts to burn from the effort. Vernon is simply parroting the script Blake just gave him, that’s all—making himself out to be the monster Blake wanted him to be when he knocked on the front door.

“You’re just saying that to make me—”

Vernon hits one knee and grabs his gun before Blake can finish the sentence. There is madness in Vernon’s eyes beyond calculation or reason.

Vernon fires.

Blake hits his knees, feels the bullet whiz past his shoulder. The insects overhead don’t react to the gunshot itself; they are attuned only to the gunfire within Blake’s soul, and Blake is trying with all his might not to will Vernon’s death, not to end things in this way, no matter how tempting, no matter how easy it seems.

Deafened by the gunshot, Blake doesn’t hear the gun hit the wood next to him, just sees it spinning away across the floor, and he doesn’t realize Vernon has lunged until the man’s weight comes crashing down on him.

They hit the floor together in a tangle of limbs, catching one side of the glass coffee table on their way down. Ashtrays and magazines tumble across Vernon’s back, and the next thing Blake knows, Vernon Fuller’s got him by both shoulders and is slamming the back of his head against the floor. The words rip from him in a torrent of furious growls. In the air behind Vernon’s head, the insects fly in mad circles like shocked witnesses, powerless to intervene without Blake’s command.

“Die, you faggot!
Die
!
”
Vernon roars. “It should have been you! It should have been you.
I wanted you to die
!
”

It’s not true. None of it’s true and Blake knows it. But the gunshot hasn’t worked, and so now Vernon has to make Blake believe he’s willing to kill him. Now Vernon must convince Blake there’s no choice but to sacrifice him to Felix Delachaise’s hungry, winged minions. And then, even as it feels like he’s still debating this terrible question, something inside of Blake gives way. Amid the racket all around them—Vernon’s growls, curses, and slurs mingling with the steady whine of the bugs covering the ceiling—Blake can’t know if he’s whispered the words aloud, but he certainly thinks them.

Take him . . .

The insistent buzz throttles down into a deeper, throaty-sounding whine, and a column of insects flies into Vernon’s open mouth, lifting him several feet into the air, where the remainder of the cloud closes in around him and the raw material of his human form is peeled away from him quickly and bloodlessly.

Blake hits the floor knees-first, then goes over, the sobs ripping from him but impossible to hear over the angry roar above. The sound changes again, from a riot of motorboats to a flock of chain saws, and a few of the little monsters clatter off the floor on all sides of him before rejoining their brothers and sisters overhead. But when Blake looks up, a blinding light seems to spread across the entire house, reflected equally off the shattered glass doors and the mirrors above the television, and suddenly he is raising both arms, as the buzz-saw sound of the insects is replaced by something that sounds more like a man’s rageful scream.