Blind tiptoeing away from Black, hunched, eyes half-closed, lips fixed in a grin. He’s not circling, he’s not stepping. It’s more of a dance. A soft, silent dance of Death. There is an exceedingly beautiful and fascinating quality about it, which I’ve observed dozens of times and never could figure out where it came from. It’s that leap into a different world, a world without pain, without blindness, where he stretches time, making each second last an eternity, where everything is just a game, even though it’s the kind of game where he could flay someone alive or turn him inside out with a flick of a finger. I know that for a fact even though I’ve never seen him actually do it. I feel the scent of madness on him in those moments, too pronounced not to scare me half to death. In that strange world of his he turns into something that is not human, something that creeps closer, slinks away, flies on rustling wings, spits poison, seeps through the floor. And it laughs. It’s the only game Blind knows how to play with someone else. Black has no hope of catching him. Black has been left on this side. His time is too slow.
I see . . .
Black crumpling. Falling down on his back, like a big doll on a string. Pale One materializes next to him and yanks the string, jerking him upright, then dropping him, again and again. He’s playing. Having fun. Except it’s too creepy to be funny. He doesn’t even seem to touch Black, and at the same time smears him across the floor, from the door to the window. Everything is covered in Black. In his teeth, in his skin. Laughter glints from under Blind’s hair. Humpback and I jump into action simultaneously, he off the bed, I off my perch above it. The rest of our guys were seemingly waiting for the signal and now join us. While we’re busy scraping Black and Blind off each other, Tabaqui notices the opened cabinets and the beer puddles on the floor.
“What the? I count to three, then I start shooting!” he screams, frantically searching for something in the pillow mound. The guests bolt for the door, tripping over each other, and I almost expect Tabaqui to snatch a machine gun from under the covers and make mincemeat out of a couple of straggler Logs, but by the time he emerges from there, with only a harmonica in his hands, there is no one left in the room but us. He grumbles and stuffs the harmonica back, postponing the dark revenge until a more convenient time.
I sit down on the floor. Someone pushes Blind in my direction. He crawls over, shaking and coughing, buries his face in my shoulder, and freezes. His sweater stinks of a garbage dump, with whiffs of a sewer. I am immovable, like a statue. Alexander and Ginger artfully decorate Black’s body with surgical tape. Lary shuffles around the room, scraping a broom across the floor. It’s quiet. Dead quiet, if you don’t count Jackal’s fevered muttering. Mona decides for some reason that Sphinx is the only safe place left in the room and jumps on my knees. Saunters back and forth, twice, brushing my shirt with her tail, kneads me gently with her paws, and lies down. I still haven’t moved. Smoker, his hands shaking, puffs on a cigarette over my ear. My shoulder is propping up Blind, my knees are a cat’s bedroom. Now I only need Nanette to land on my head, and it’s a perfect shot for
Alexander and Ginger finish tending to Black and look at Blind uncertainly. Tabaqui crawls closer and also gawks.
“Horrible,” he whispers. “Look at him. Vampire, pure and simple.”
I look out of the corner of my eye. Blind is asleep, his face calm and peaceful. He never has a face like that when he’s awake.
Lary drops the broom and stares at Blind in shock.
“He’s right, you know. Why would he be so blissful all of a sudden? He shouldn’t be blissful. And he shouldn’t be sleeping. I don’t like this.”
Tabaqui revels in it.
“That’s exactly how they are, Lary my friend. Lying in their caskets, happy and rose cheeked, grinning from ear to ear. That’s how you tell their ilk. A stake through the heart!”
From the corner of the room where Black is located suddenly comes a sound, half moan and half roar. Noble is fussing over the swollen, eyeless head with alcohol pads, while Nanette peeks at his hands from behind the pillow.
“A stake,” Tabaqui keeps muttering. “This, you know, sharpened thing . . .”
Black groans again and pushes away Noble’s hand.
“We should drive one through your tongue,” Noble snaps. “Can’t you give it a rest, Tabaqui? Aren’t you tired at all?”
“Right. Where was I? I seem to have lost the thrust of the narrative . . .”
“Look,” Ginger cries all of a sudden, pointing at the window. “There, look!”
Humpback and Alexander run to the window. We turn around and look there too. Into the blue-black sky where a feeble sliver of the morning is trying to part the darkness.
“Morning!” Lary exclaims majestically, waving the broom. “The sun!”
