The Old: Chapter 9

While Chris contemplated this, there was a knock at the door, and Lewis murmured, “Who the fuck can that be at this time of night?”

But he went to answer it anyway.

A woman was at the door with a fevered child and she said, “He’s not waking up, and before you ask, I can’t take him to the hospital.”

“Bring him in here,” Lewis said, nodding to the bed. “Place him there. I’ll be back in a moment.”

Lewis went through the kitchen, and then to the bathroom. and cleaned out the tub and then he said, “Bringing him in here,” and in the bathroom, Lewis began to undress the sweating boy and place him in the tub that was semi full of cold water. Chris watched as more water rumbled into the tub, and Lewis told the mother. “You just sit there. Right on the toilet, and I will hold up his head.”

While Lewis submerged the boy in cold water, Chris wondered why this woman hadn’t had the sense to do the same thing, and why she would come to Lewis this late at night, but Lewis said, “What happened before?”

“I put him in the water, but it didn’t seem to do anything, and this is the third time it’s happened in a week. He speaks to himself, and even after the fever is broken, he doesn’t always wake up right away. I spent three hours in the emergency room waiting for them to do anything, and do you know how much it costs me?”

Lewis did not answer, but put the back of his hand to the boy’s head.

“The fever is gone. Chris, lay one of the old blankets on the bed for me.”

Chris nodded and left and a moment later, Lewis brought the dripping boy back into the living room, and laid him on the bed, opening the windows.

“I need you all to be very quiet,” he said.

The woman nodded. Chris did nothing, and Lewis pulled out a chair and sat down across from the boy, closing his eyes and resting his head in his hands. For a long time the boy lay there in deep sleep, and Lewis in silence, and it was at the time when Chris almost spoke that Lewis stood up and went into the kitchen and retrieved from behind one of the portraits on the altar, a vial, and from the vial he began to pour oil into his hands, anointing the boy.

“Blessed be thy feet which have brought thee here, and blessed be thy knees which kneel. Blessed be thy navel, which is the source of thy fire. Blessed be thy breastbone, blessed by thy throat which speaketh to praise the Lord.”

And while Chris looked on, Lewis continued, “Blessed be thy limbs which carry you. Blessed be thy arms and thy legs, blessed be thy mind, blessed by thy lips. Blessed be the space between the eyes. Chris bring me the sage. It’s half burnt. You can’t miss it.”

And while he burned the pungent sage, moving it across the sleeping boy, he continued to murmur over and over again:

His voice became quieter until it was a whisper, until it was nothing but a groan, and his body trembled in trance, and now his hand went to the boy’s chest, and now he lay himself across the boy, and it was as if he was asleep too. The mother watched, saying nothing, and Chris watched with a frown until, at last, Lewis rose, and blowing out his breath he said, “I expel thee. Trouble him no more. I expel thee,” and as he spoke the boy’s eyes began to flutter.

“Mama…”

“I expel thee,” Lewis continued, taking the sage and burning it again, “Trouble him no more. I expel thee. Clothe the boy,” he said as an aside, “I expel thee, trouble him no more.”

And he took from under the bed, the thin metal wand Chris had seen before, and Lewis began to trace over the boy and over the room a pentagram, and then another and then to describe another five pointed star. And now he took his wand through it, and though Chris saw nothing, he saw the boy’s expression, and the woman’s, and he felt as if a great heaviness had been lifted or scattered, and then Lewis put down the wand and said, “I need to sit down, but by all means, don’t feel like you have to leave. Chris, could you get some juice for the boy. Madam, what would you like?”

Twenty minutes later, when the woman and the boy left, Lewis was still exhausted, and as Chris shut the door behind him, he looked at Lewis.

“So,” he said, “that was magic.”

Lewis shrugged

“It’s such a reductive word.”

“You healed that boy.”

“I did.”

“Some people are so bad. Like that boy they say is running around here. Hit that poor man in the back of the head, and his wife brought him to the hospital. But you heal this woman’s son. He was burning up. He was on fire.”

“He had a brain fever. He would have been brain damaged. No point in telling her that. I did not do the full anointing. I relied on my will to make up for that. The full anointing requires oiling his genitals, and the witch being naked as well. And solitude. I didn’t think any good mother would allow that. So, I relied on the strength of my will to make up for what was lacking in the rite. I had the feeling there was a presence at the back of it.”

“A demon.”

“What some would call a demon. But he has departed now. He has departed from this world,”

Lewis yawned deeply and, as he did, he began to undress, and so Chris did too. They stood naked, and Lewis pressed himself against Chris.

“We are both very tired. I feel it is time for us to depart from this world too. At least for a few hours.”

They are people of the night, obviously Chris more a person of the night than Lewis. And he had worked at the college until one in the morning. It was nearly two when he got in, and when the woman showed up with her son, it was at least three. They don’t go to sleep until there is grey in the sky, and there is nothing to do for Chris or Lewis but hold each other. Chris plunges into the deepest of sleeps, not that dreams have ever been a part of his nights.

In the morning, as Chris stirs, Lewis is tracing his lips with his fingers; he touches his front teeth. Chris’s pale blue eyes, blink up at him as he begins to smile.

“Touch them. Touch my teeth.”

Chris opens his mouth, and Lewis’s index finger moves up and down the front row. It reminds him, though he doesn’t dare say it, of his dogs, when he was a child, how he would tickle their gums and run his fingers along their teeth, and he passes, further back than a dog’s would be, the canine teeth.

“I didn’t,” he began, “I knew they were there, but…”

Lewis’s hands go to the top of Chris’s mouth, and Chris looks at him steadily Back in his jaw, two at the top, two at the bottom, not like a dog’s at all, but like a serpent’s, strong, strong like ivory, and because Chris is his lover now, he runs a finger along the inside of his cheek where there is skin stronger than any skin, slicker than sny skin, skin which would not be bothered by the closing of fangs, and before and behind the great fangs, smaller fangs, Lewis withdraws his finger without drying his hand.

“You know, every time were making love there’s a part of me that wants to bite you,” Chris said, looking at him, eyes hooded, seeming almost drunk.

Lewis turns from Chris, his back to him, either ignoring his words or inviting, Chris doesn’t know. He is erect with his admission, and presses himself to Lewis, his penis turgid between the hills of his ass.

Lewis reaches back and pulls Chris’s head to him, messaging his hair and the back of his neck, and Chris presses his mouth to him and licks the nape of his neck, his penis becoming harder with the pleasure.

“You have to tell me to,” Chris says. “I won’t do that to you without you telling me I can.”

“I’ve wanted you to. A little. But I did not ask what would happen.”

“Nothing,”

Chris runs his hands up and down Lewis’s sides.

“To kill takes a different bite,” Chris licked him. “To transform takes a different bite still. But to taste?”

“Do it.”

“I will,” Chris said. “But you have to do something.”

“Yes.”

“Fuck me. Fuck me so deep. Fuck me, and I want to feel your fingernails on my back. I want you to scratch as hard you can. I want that this morning.”

Lewis bends his neck to Chris’s mouth, to the sharp pain of his teeth, and then to something like ecstasy at his bite, at his blood being taken, and he turns to kiss him. In the bed that morning as the sun rises, Chris feeds, and Lewis’s hands run down his back, wanting to do what they’ve always done, raking him in return for the ecstasy and the pain of kisses which are bites on the throat and on the arm, on the breast and finally, as Chris turns on his stomach, he takes in Lewis, so hard with desire, and Lewis grits his teeth while he fucks Chris so hard his lover cries out like a horn, and the bed shakes, hitting the wall until orgasm stretches through Lewis’s body, cramping and uncramping his toes, until they both call out together and then collapse, Chris body’s still flexing and pulling on Lewis, still pulling his cock deep inside of him. While Lewis, drained of his seed, still fucks on. The bed does not stop shaking. They are both wearied from lovemaking, drenched in sweat in a bed speckled with blood.

They lay curled on the bed, face to face, half sleeping, fingers linked together, and Chris began murmuring, though in a different voice than Lewis had yet heard:

“About Yule, when the wind blew cool;
And the round tables began,
A' there is come to our king's court
Mony a well-favoured man.

The queen looked o'er the castle wa',
Beheld baith dale and down,
And then she saw young Waters
Come riding to the town.

And then she saw young

Waters come riding to the town.”

Chris yawned.

“What is that?” Lewis asked. “It reminds me of songs I know.”

“It is from my youth.”

Lewis placed the palm of his hand against Chris’s cheek, and then along his shoulder.

“For some reason I never asked. I guess I thought it might be too personal. Where you came from. How things happened.”

“How I became a vampire?”

“Well, yes.”

Chris smiled.

“That’s a sort of long story,” he said, “and so unrelated to my childhood and to being a lad that it’s hard to put the two together.”

Lewis noted that Chris had said lad, that his voice had again drifted into that accent.

“Part of me thought, maybe you’re like Louis and Lestat, some French vampire with depression and aristocratic tendencies. And then the other part thought, well, it‘s probably like people with past lives who wish they were Cleopatra, but turn out to be scullery maids.”

Chris laughed deeply at this and said, “I am definitely more on the scullery maid end of things. And I am not French. I’ve been depressed, but never French.”

He was over three hundred years old, older than this country.

And then Chris lay on his back, turned to Lewis, grinned.

He said, “Well, I’m fascinated. Where do you think I came from?”

“Well,” Lewis said, “Lawrence told me your favorite era was the Fifties.”

“I did enjoy the Fifties. The Sixties were necessary, for sure, but bloody and painful, and the Seventies never really got finished.”

“But if you are three hundred years old and,” Lewis laid on his back, “the Fifties is your favorite era, then I can’t imagine your growing up was that wonderful. You were not a prince.”

“I was far from a prince.”

“You were… born in America. In a colony. You lived some place like Salem. No… Not American. I… give up.”

“You don’t give up,” Chris said. “You just want me to tell you.”

“Well, yes.”

“I could tell that even though you thought you were just guessing, you were seeing.”

“You want me to use my power.”

“I suppose I was asking for a cheap show.”

Lewis turned on his side looking over Chris.

“Once upon a time I was English,” Chris said. “I was one of fifteen children. We lived in a hovel like one of those hovels you see on the history specials. We thought water was bad for you, and had no concept of germs or anything. I was illiterate and by modern standards… or by standards then even, foul, probably more foul than homeless people you turn your nose up to on the streets. It’s hard to describe that world. It’s so different. When you continue to live you have to change, and when you look at the self you are, then it’s hard to remember the person you were.

“But you are right. I did come to America, or the Americas. I did live in a little colonial town where I dug the ditches that people shat in. I was a slave. Not like a Black slave. They couldn’t get away. Things were getting stricter then.”

“You were an indentured servant?”

“That’s exactly what I was.”

Suddenly Chris sang:

“His footmen they did rin before,
His horsemen rade behind;
Ane mantle of the burning gowd
Did keep him frae the wind.”

“Something out of a history book,” Lewis said,

Chris groaned, turning in around on the bed and lying back on his back.

“And it was not like in the history books where they make things sanitary and sweet and white. That’s what white means, you know?” Chris said. “Not your white skin, but your whitened out history. All darkness, all truth, all heritage removed. It was not simple. It was backbreaking. It was...” Chris frowned.

Lewis understood, “Not something you really wish to talk about.”.

“No,” Chris said. “The past… when there’s so much of it, sometimes it is a comfort to leave it where it is. Especially now that the present is so good.”

Lewis nodded, pressing himself against Chris, whose long arm went around him.

Chris murmured, “I wish I’d been that prince.”

“Mister! Mister! Can you help me?”

Dreaded last words before the homeless man asks if you have the quarter it costs for a a cup of coffee at a diner that hasn’t existed since the 1950s or before they break out into a tap dance and song, and ask for a few dollars you didn’t carry because ever since the ATM card had been invented, you don’t carry cash anymore. But this was just a kid, some teenager who should probably be on his way to school, hanging around Lunt Avenue. And Lunt wasn’t dangerous, not really, but night was approaching, and not many people were around. Up the road, across the El track, was the Golden Cowboy, the burger place with the street café.

“Whaddo you need?”

“I just need to know how to get to Morse.”

“Well,” Tim said, “That’s easy. You just go the next block over. What neighborhood are you looking for?”

“Twenty three hundred.”

“Even easier, you’re a block and a half that way.’

“Which way, sir?”

“Oh, there,” Timothy pointed up the street.

“Well, what’s over there?” the boy asked.

“Over there—”

As Timothy Burgess, aged twenty-five, hit the sidewalk, face down, the pain in front of his head joined the pain in the back of his bleeding skull while the boy ran down the street with his metal stick, laughing.