"Now, Mrs. Stutgart became more and more reclusive. Many of her circle were murdered, or very sensibly committed suicide. She became more psychically powerful still – and her 'arrangements' with the Akishra, the creatures who make this parasitism possible, became more involved. They maintained her in a degree of good health, while others aged around her. They fed, through her, on the shattered souls of those who were her prey. She took the senses, the minds of her victims; the
Akishra sucked instead at their spirits. She had become symbiotic with them.
"Eventually…" Here Ephram paused to sigh, and chew a nail in sudden anxiety, wondering: What was he risking, with these revelations?
But he found he could not prevent himself from continuing…
"Eventually, little Constance, Mrs. Stutgart developed a new circle of friends around her. A whole new generation. This was in the 1940s, and on into the early '60s. There was, for example, a young producer named Sam Denver. Whom she eventually married. She changed both her first and last names – she goes, now, by Judy Denver. Also in this circle were other luminaries of film and the arts. There was the actor Lou Kenson; there was the painter Gebhardt who claimed to do portraits of one's aura as well as one's physical person. And there were -"
I remember Lou Kenson!" Constance exclaimed. "He was a big star when I was little. He was in that TV show Honolulu Hello."
"Yes, yes, quite. Ah, also in this new circle were many who didn't seem to belong – such as myself. I had written an essay on Nietzsche that 'Judy Denver' enthused over, so she contacted me, and wired me a ticket to visit her at the Doublekey Ranch. Some intuition prompted me to accept. There, at the Ranch, I was initiated. I had a rather spectacular talent, you see – a talent the others did not have – which set me apart, and made me a valuable resource to the Denvers.
"The blossoming of this Divine Vision, as I think of it, this special talent, made me realize I was above the repugnant miscegenation that the Denvers and their set indulged in…
"What's miscegenation?" Constance asked.
"Interbreeding between races, my dear. In this case it went farther, really – it was interbreeding between species. Well, perhaps what they were doing was not exactly breeding, not sex – but it was a hideous congress of animal and man. The Akishra are thinking creatures, in a sense, but they are not highly evolved beings – they are really a kind of animal. An etheric animal. They are not in the same class as the Nameless Spirit…
"I did not wish to belong to the Akishra. So, I broke away. I found the Nameless Spirit, and with it, my own direction…
"Pleasure is important, but – despite what I may have told you for my earlier convenience – it is not enough alone. There must also be exaltation. True dominance and transcendence! Otherwise I would be only what the Denvers are: pleasure vampires. Vampires of the pleasure-centre of the brain, something they are absorbed in so fully they are no longer able to think beyond it. It is their raison d'etre . Pleasure – and pain in others that becomes pleasure in the Akishra.
"Pleasure can be taken to levels the Akishra cannot comprehend, when one becomes the superman, the man who is more than man. And we simply cannot achieve real dominance with the damn worms haunting us day and night…"
"Ephram?" she asked. "Could you give me a little more Reward now?"
"Oh yes, my dear. Here's a little. That's all for now.
"We'll talk more of this later. We'll talk of the Nameless Spirit. First, let me play some Mozart for you, and let us have a bite to eat. I know how you like pizza, and I ordered one for you in anticipation of your return. I'll just put some in the microwave. Then we'll drink in more Reward, and contemplate, together, a fine and elegant murder…"
Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles
It was a relief when Lissa opened the door. Though the sunny afternoon seemed to make a joke of his fears, Prentice had been irrationally certain that Arthwright would be waiting at Lissa's place, smirkingly poised behind the door. "I should have been cool and waited to see you at the party," Prentice said. "But -" He shrugged ruefully and hoped he was coming off charmingly smitten. "I just had to see you."
She smiled. "I can live with that." She was wearing a sky-blue Japanese robe, embroidered with red dragons, open in the front to show only a white string bikini. "You wanted to see me – and you can see me pretty well, in this thing. I was out back getting a tan. Come on in."
He'd been hoping that coming here would drive the burden of Amy's imagined presence from him. He'd felt dogged by memories of her, almost by a sense of her nearness, for days. It was wearing on him. Sometimes it very nearly terrified him.
But the nagging intrusiveness, the taint of Amy's point of view, stuck with him as he followed Lissa into the house. Tacky robe she's wearing, he imagined Amy saying. And these paintings. What is she, a Hare Krishna?
The wall was adorned with framed prints of Hindu deities, scenes from the Uppanishads; brilliant-hued panoplies of spirits from the tormented fertility of India.
They stepped into a modern living room with a flagstone floor scattered with sheepskin rugs, and a tinted glass back wall; out back, a cinderblock fence enclosed a kidney-shaped pool, a redwood hot tub, and immaculately gardened strips of Bird of Paradise, gardenia bushes and yucca. The back door was open and the heavy odor of gardenias hung almost cloyingly in the air. "You live rather well," Prentice began, pausing to look around. He had almost finished by saying, For a secretary. But that would have been rude. Still, it was odd. This place was large and expensive.
"The place is left over from a former marriage; he got the cash and I got the house," Lissa said; she said it rather glibly, Prentice thought. She looked at him thoughtfully a moment, then went on, "I was just going to have a light beer. You want one?"
"Sure. Thanks."
Beers in hand, they settled on the white couch. "You look kind of tense," she said.
"Do I? I guess I am. It's a couple of things. Not knowing how to act today with you – how much of what happened at the party was a fluke of your mood or… or what. And I've been bothered by… Well. Maybe I should tell you about Amy."
She raised a casual hand. "Hey. You're under no obligation to apologize for having girlfriends and wives or whatever."
Prentice imagined Amy remarking, You might know the slut would take that attitude.
He took a long pull at the beer, and then said, "You misunderstand, Lissa. Amy's dead. She was my ex-wife. I identified her body not that long ago… I'm still a little freaked out by it."
He expected the ritual noises of sympathy from her. But she only nodded slowly, and squeezed his arm. And said, "Look – the only thing you can do is let go. Just let go of her. And feeling responsible – I see that in you, that you feel responsible. But we're not responsible for how other people end their lives. You know? You get out of yourself you'll feel better. I've got an idea…"
She disappeared into a side hall, past the kitchen area, and he wondered if he were supposed to follow her back to the bedroom. He imagined Amy saying, God what a bitch. 'Just let go of her' she says. That's easy for this slut to say…
"Stop it," he muttered to himself
Lissa came back with something cupped in one hand. She sat down and opened her hand; in it were two large gel capsules of white powder. Prentice stared at it, then shook his head hastily. "No. No thanks. I don't indulge. Too many of my friends have taken the big plunge behind drugs…"
"This isn't anything addictive. It's MDMA. You know – Ecstasy."