"The authorities have advised me that the fellow is terrified," wrote Aaron. "He insists that he is being hounded by a spirit, and that he would do anything to expiate his guilt. He begs for drugs to render him unconscious. I do believe he will be placed in a mental hospital, in spite of the clear viciousness of the crimes." Naturally, Merrick was advised of the whole affair. Aaron sent her a pack of newspaper clippings, as well as what court records he could obtain.
But much to my great relief, Merrick did not wish to go back to Louisiana at that time.
"There is no need for me to confront this person," she wrote to me. "I'm sure, from all that Aaron's told me, that justice has been done."
Less than two weeks later, Aaron advised me by letter that the murderer of Cold Sandra and Honey had died by his own hand.
I called Aaron at once:
"Have you told Merrick?" I asked.
After a long pause, Aaron said, quite calmly:
"I suspect that Merrick knows."
"Why on earth do you say that?" I asked immediately. I was always too impatient with Aaron's reticence. However, this time he was not to keep me in the dark.
"The spirit who haunted this fellow," said Aaron, "was a tall woman with brown hair and green eyes. Now that does not square with our pictures of Cold Sandra or Honey in the Sunshine, does it?"
I answered no, that it did not.
"Well, he's dead now, poor fool," said Aaron. "And maybe Merrick can continue her work in peace." That is exactly what Merrick did: continue her work in peace.
And now:
Now, after all these years, I have come back to her, asking her to raise the soul of the Dead Child Claudia for Louis, and for me.
I have asked her in so many words to use her magic, which might surely mean using the mask, which I know to be in her possession at Oak Haven, as it had always been, the mask which could let her see spirits between life and death. I have done that, I who know what she has suffered, and what a good and happy person she could be, and is.
16
IT WAS AN HOUR before dawn when I finished the story.
Louis had listened all of this time in silence, never bringing a question, never making a distraction, but merely absorbing my words.
Out of respect for me, he remained silent, but I could see a flood of emotion in his face. His dark-green eyes made me think of Merrick's, and for one moment I felt such a desire for her, such a horror of what I'd done, that I couldn't speak. Finally Louis explained the very perceptions and sensations that were overwhelming me as I thought about all I'd said.
"I never realized how much you loved this woman," he said. "I never realized how very different you are from me."
"I love her, yes, and perhaps I myself didn't realize how much until I told you the history. I made myself see it. I made myself remember. I made myself experience my union with her again. But when you speak of you and me being different, you must tell me what you mean."
"You're wise," he said, "Wise in ways that only an elderly human being can be. You experienced old age in a way that none of the rest of us has ever known. Not even the great mother, Maharet, knew infirmity before she was made a vampire centuries ago. Certainly, Lestat has never grasped it, in spite of all his injuries. And I? I've been too young for too long."
"Don't condemn yourself for it. Do you think human beings are meant to know the bitterness and loneliness I knew in my last mortal years? I don't think so. Like all creatures, we're made to live until our prime. All the rest is spiritual and physical disaster. Of that I'm convinced."
"I can't agree with you," he said modestly. "What tribe on earth has not had elders? How much of our art and our knowledge comes from those who've lived into old age? You sound like Lestat when you say such things, speaking of his Savage Garden. The world has never seemed a hopelessly savage place to me."
I smiled.
"You believe so many things," I said. "One has only to press you to discover them, yet you deny the value of everything you've learned, in your constant melancholy. You do, you know."
He nodded. "I can't make sense of things, David," he said.
"Maybe we're not meant to, any of us, whether we're old or very young."
"Possibly so," he said. "But what's very important now is that we both make a solemn vow. We will not injure this vital and unique woman. Her strength won't blind us. We will feed her curiosity and be just to her, and protective of her, but we will not bring her any harm."
I nodded. I knew his meaning quite plainly. Oh, how I knew it.
"Would that I could say," he whispered, "that we would withdraw our request. Would that I could endure without Merrick's magic. Would that I could leave this world without ever seeing Claudia's ghost."
"Don't talk of ending it, please, I can't listen to it," I hastened to say.
"Oh, but I must talk of it. It's all I think about."
"Then think of those words I spoke to the spirit in the cave. Life belongs to those who are alive. You are alive."
"At such a price," he said.
"Louis, we are both of us desperate to live," I said. "We look to Merrick's magic for consolation. We dream of looking through the mask ourselves, don't we? We want to see something that does make it all come together, is that not so?"
"I don't know that I'm so deliberate, David," he responded. His face was dark with worry, heavy with fine lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth, lines that vanished whenever his face was still. "I don't know what I want," he confessed.
"Oh, but to see spirits as Merrick has seen them, as you've seen them. Oh, if only I could hear the ghostly harpsichord that others hear in this place. Oh, if I could talk to a spirit with the strength of Honey in the Sunshine, what that would mean to me."
"Louis, what can make you want to continue?" I asked. "What could make you see that we are privileged witnesses of what the world has to offer on all sides?"
He laughed, a short polite but contemptuous laugh.
"A clear conscience, David," he replied. "What else?"
"Then take the blood I have to give," I said to him. "Take the blood Lestat has offered you more than once. Take the blood that you've refused so many times, and be strong enough to live by the 'little drink' and push death out of your way." I was a bit surprised at the vehemence with which I recommended this, because before this conversation—before this long night of storytelling—I had thought his decision to refuse the powerful blood to be very wise. As I've stated in this narrative, he was weak enough that the sun might easily destroy him, and in that lay an immense consolation which Lestat and I did not share.
Now, he studied me with a look of interest. I saw no condemnation in his eyes.
I rose and walked slowly about the room. Once again, I looked at the bright and confident painting by Monet. All my life seemed close to me suddenly; all my determination was to live.
"No, I can't die by my own will," I murmured, "not even if it's as simple as going into the sunlight. That I cannot do. I want to know what happens! I want to know when and if Lestat wakes from his dreamy sleep. I want to know what will become of Merrick! I want to know what will become of Armand. That I can live forever? Oh, how I cherish it! I cannot pretend to be the mortal who once refused Lestat. I cannot reach back and claim that being's unimaginative heart." I turned and it seemed the room was pulsing violently around me, all its color coalescing, as though Monet's spirit had infected the very fabric of the solid matter and the air. All the objects of the room seemed arbitrary and symbolic. And beyond lay the savage night—Lestat's Savage Garden—and random unanswerable stars.
As for Louis, he was captivated as only he can become, yielding as men almost never yield, no matter in what shape or form the male spirit may be clothed.