The Vengeful Spirit of Lake Nepeakea Read online

  Sangre

  Lisa Tuttle

  Glenda stepped out of the shower and stopped before the mirror. Her hair looped up and confined beneath a shower cap left her long neck bare and made her eyes look larger and darker.

  "You look Spanish," Steve said.

  She didn't turn, but continued staring at herself in the mirror, her beautiful face impassive.

  He put his hands on her wet shoulders, bent his head to kiss her neck.

  "Dry me," she said.

  He picked up a towel and patted her reverently, tenderly dry. She reached up and pulled off the cap and let her hair tumble, a flow of honey and brown, to her waist. He caught his breath.

  "When is checkout?" she asked.

  "Noon."

  Now she turned to face him. "And then what? After we leave an hour from now, then what?"

  "Anything you want. I'll take you to lunch anywhere you say, and then we'll have time to do a little shopping before you have to be at the airport. Anything you want." His eyes pleaded with her.

  "Anything you want," she mimicked. Her face contorted in anger; she gave the towel he still held a jerk and wrapped it around herself. "How can you?"

  "Glenda—"

  "I'm not talking about today! I'm talking about what after today? When I come back, do we just pretend it never happened? Do we just forget about us? How can you take me out and screw me, and then go tripping home to my mother? And what is this trip to Spain thing? Can't you handle it any more? Mother getting suspicious?"

  "Darling, don't. Of course I don't want you out of the way. I love you. And I love your mother. Believe me, this is as hard for me—"

  "Oh, sure it is. Just tell me this: why should I be the one to lose? What happens to me after you marry my mother?"

  "Sweetheart, try to understand…"

  "Oh, yes, I'm the one who has to understand, and Mother's the one who doesn't suspect. Just how long do you think that's going to last?"

  "In time," he said, straining for patience, for the sound of wisdom in his voice, "in time I hope we… the three of us… can work something out. But this is very difficult. You, you're young, while people like your mother and myself are very much shackled by the old morality; you can accept relationships that are… more free… and in time, maybe after your mother and I are married, the three of us can…" He faltered and stopped. Her expression mocked him.

  "I never lied to you," he said, suddenly defensive, suddenly angrily sure that he was making a fool of himself. "You knew what you were getting into; you knew who I was when you became my mistress—"

  "Mistress." She said the word with loathing, and he caught the steely glint of hatred in her eyes. He tried to recoup but before he could speak she shook her head impatiently and let the towel drop.

  "Well," she said. "We've still got an hour."

  Debbie opened her mouth and desperately forced a yawn as the plane began to take off. As the air pressure stabilized she turned to Glenda and said approvingly, "Your stepfather is good-looking."

  "Steve's not my stepfather."

  "Well, whatever. They're getting married soon, aren't they?"

  "July. Right after I come back from Spain." Glenda laid her cheek against the window and shut her eyes.

  "He looks awfully young."

  Glenda shrugged. "A couple of years younger than my mother."

  Debbie bent her dark head over her copy of The Sun Also Rises when it became obvious that Glenda was in no mood for conversation. The two had played together as children and remained friends into the same college in an undemanding, almost superficial fashion.

  Glenda chewed her lip. "Look what he gave me," she said suddenly, holding out her hand. "Steve, I mean." It was a silver ring, very simple, the ends bent into a curving "S" design. It had been made for her while she watched in the narrow dark handcrafts shop, clutching Steve's hand with emotion she didn't show on her calm face.

  Debbie nodded. "Pretty. He's paying for this trip, isn't he?"

  "He insisted. And Mother — well, she's so hung up on him that whatever he says is fine with her."

  "I think it's great," Debbie said. "Your mother getting married again. And you like him so much, too."

  "Oh, we're great friends."

  Their room in Sevilla had two beds, a red-brick floor and a balcony from which could be seen La Giralda, the Moorish tower. Glenda stood on the balcony in the evening, the heat of the day already fading from the air, and watched the swallows dip and soar around the tower, pink-auraed from the setting sun.

  Glenda had not known why, but coming to Sevilla after the noise and cars of grey Madrid had felt like coming home. She had led Debbie (plump Debbie panting a little under her backpack) through the winding streets as if guided by something, coming upon the little hotel and finding it perfect without feeling surprise. But at the same time she felt giddy, her stomach clenched with excitement, the way she always felt on those rare occasions when she was to be alone with Steve. With evening the feeling of something impending had become stronger and Glenda felt reality slipping away from her as if it were a dream.

  She put a hand to her cheek and found it unnaturally hot. She turned back into the room where Debbie was putting on a skirt.

  "It's nearly eight," Debbie said. "I think it's legal to go out to dinner now."

  Glenda felt herself drifting as they sat at dinner, and blamed it on the wine when Debbie commented on her inattentiveness. Things were slipping away from her. Everything seemed unnaturally bright and unreal as if she watched it on a screen in a dark, muffled room.

  Once back, Glenda went straight to bed while Debbie wrote a letter to her parents.

  "Sure the light won't bother you?"

  "I'm sure." It was an effort to say the words. The room went spinning away from her, telescoping into another world, and Glenda slept.

  She woke, her mouth dry. Debbie was a dark lump in the next bed. The shutters were open and moonlight sliced into the room. Glenda felt ragingly hot. With part of her mind she noted that fact and it registered that perhaps she was sick, with a fever. Her own body began to seem as remote to her as everything else around her.

  There was someone on the balcony. Now he blocked the light, now he moved and it illuminated him. There was the tightness of terror in her throat, but her mind clicked observations into her consciousness as unemotionally as a typewriter.

  He wore a cloak, and some sort of slouch-brimmed hat. Polished boots gleamed in the moonlight, and was that a sword hung at his side? Don Juan? noted a coolly amused voice within her. Come to seduce this Andalusian cutie?

  Oh, really?

  He made no move to enter the room and she gained some measure of courage from that, enough to raise herself on her elbows and stare at him. If he noticed her movement he made no sign. She sat up then and swung her legs over the side of the bed. The room receded and advanced dizzyingly before it settled into its detached and unreal, but at least stable, form.

  He was waiting for her on the balcony. She opened her mouth to speak, to end the joke, to let him know she was awake and that, perhaps, he had come to the wrong window. But to speak seemed a desecration, a monumental undertaking of which she was not capable. He opened his arms to her, that cloaked figure, his face masked by shadow, and waited for her to step into them. She saw herself as if from a distance, a somnambulant figure in a long white gown, long hair flowing, face pale and innocent from sleep, and she watched this figure move into the waiting arms.

  She looked up, he moved his head and the moonlight spilled fully across his features. She realized then that it was not Don Juan at all, but another legend entirely: the pasty face, the oddly peaked eyebrows, the parted red lips ov
er which pointed teeth gleamed… Her head fell back against his arm, her eyes closed and her sacrificial neck gleamed white and pure.

  "Glenda?"

  A rush of nausea hit her, she opened her eyes, stumbled, and caught herself at the railing.

  "Glen, are you all right?"

  Glenda turned her head and saw Debbie — no one else, only Debbie, solid and comforting in pink nylon.

  "I was hot," she said, and had to clear her throat and say it again. She was hot, and very thirsty. "Is there anything to drink?"

  "Part of that litre of Coke from the train. Are you sure you're okay?"

  "Yes, yes… only thirsty." She gulped the Coke desperately but it burned her throat. She choked and felt sick. "G'night." She crawled back into bed and would say nothing more to Debbie, who finally sighed and went back to sleep herself.

  "I hate to leave you alone," Debbie said, hovering uncertainly at the door. "How do you feel?"

  Glenda lay in bed. "Really, it's nothing. I just don't feel up to anything today.. But I'm not so sick that I can't make it down three flights to get the manager or his wife if I need something. You go out sightseeing with that nice Canadian and don't worry about me. I'll get some sleep. Best thing."

  "You're sure? You wouldn't rather move to a bigger hotel? So we'd have our own bathroom?"

  "Of course not. I like it here."

  "Well… Shall I bring you anything?"

  "Something to drink. A bottle of wine. I'm so thirsty."

  "I don't think wine… well, I'll get you something."

  And finally Debbie was gone. Glenda relaxed her stranglehold on a reality that had become more strange and tenuous with every passing second. She fell.

  She was on the street called Death, one of the narrow, cobbled streets bound on each side by houses painted a blinding white. The name of the street was painted in blue on a tile set into one of the houses: Muerte.

  The girl had been crying. She was dirty and her face was sticky with tears and dirt. It was siesta and she was alone on the quiet street but she knew that she would not be alone for long. And they must not find her. She knew that she must leave the city for safety, but the thought of wandering alone through the countryside frightened her as much as did the thought of remaining, and so she was at an impasse, incapable of action.

  If they found her, they would take their vengeance on her although she had done nothing, was innocently involved. She thought of the past month, of the widespread sickness throughout the town, of the deaths — bodies found in the street, pale and dead with the unmistakable marks upon their necks — and of the fear, the growing terror.

  Her mother had taken to staying out all night, returning pale and exhausted at dawn to fall into a heavy sleep. But as she slept she smiled, and the girl, standing by the pillow and smoothing her mother's tangled hair, found the words of the townspeople creeping, unwanted, into her mind. Was it true, what they said, that she consorted with the devil? That her mother with her lover swooped through the night in the form of bats, seeking out unwary night travellers, to waylay them and drink their blood? She began to be frightened of her mother, while still loving her, and watched through half-closed eyes as she crept out every night. And finally one night had ended without bringing her mother home and the girl had been alone ever since.

  She wandered, not knowing where to go, hungry and thirsty but too frightened to knock on a door and ask for wine and shelter. It grew later, and as it grew dark doors began to close and people went hurriedly in twos and threes. Once the streets had been as filled with lanterns as a summer meadow is filled with fireflies, but now there was a monster abroad.

  The moon came up and gave her light and finally she came to a small plaza with a fountain in the centre. But the fountain was dead and dry and she leaned against it, crying with frustration until she was too tired to cry any more.

  Something made her look up, some feeling of danger. The moon was high. A man stood in one of the four entrances to the plaza, a man draped in the folds of an all-encompassing cloak. The toes of his boots gleamed as did his eyes, two points of light beneath his slouch hat.

  She kept still, hoping he had not noticed her in the shadows.

  "Daughter," he said, in a voice like dry leaves in the wind.

  An involuntary twitch.

  "My darling daughter." He took a step forward.

  She was running, never looking back, sobbing deep in her throat and running down one street and then another, perilously afraid that she would run a circle and re-enter the plaza to find him there… She ran. Then down a street she should not have taken, a cul-de-sac. She turned to escape and found him there, in her way.

  She was rigid. The dry leaves rustled in his throat as he came towards her. He raised his arms and his cloak as if they were joined, as if he were draped in huge wings which he would fold around the two of them. His lips parted; she could hear his breathing, could see the gleam of his teeth. She fell.

  Glenda woke, trembling violently.

  "Did I wake you up? Honey, are you all right? You look pale as a ghost. We're going for lunch, do you want—"

  Glenda shook her head. "Uh, I'm not feeling too great." The words felt torn from her raw throat. She was thirsty. "Did you get me something to drink?"

  "Oh, I'm sorry! I forgot. What would you like? I'll run and get it for you. And something to eat?"

  Glenda shook her head again. "No. Just a drink." It was hard to concentrate, harder still to focus.

  Debbie came to the bed and reached towards Glenda who pulled away violently.

  "Glen, I just want to see if you have a fever. Hmm… you are pretty hot. My God, what'd you do to your neck?"

  Glenda caressed the twin shallow wounds with her fingertips and shook her head.

  "I think we should get you to a hospital."

  "No. I'll be… I'll take some aspirin… I'll stay… I'll be all right…"

  Debbie's face was blurring and clearing like something seen from underwater. She fell.

  The moon was down and the sky beginning to lighten when she opened her eyes. She was sprawled on the cobblestones of a short narrow street, and got painfully to her feet. She was ragingly thirsty. Her mouth felt gummy, her tongue too large. She pushed her hair back, away from her face, with both hands and felt the trace of something sticky. She returned her hand for a lingering exploration and remembered the marks on the necks of certain townspeople, and remembered their eventual deaths.

  She travelled twisting streets until she came within sight of la Giralda. The rising sun illumined it and she saw a single bat hanging like a curled leaf in the tower.

  The people of Sevilla, in the form of two drunken men, had at one time attempted to keep the devil (who was reputed to inhabit the Moorish tower in the form of a bat) in his resting place and out of the streets of Sevilla by boarding up the door. But it was pointed out to them that, even assuming wooden slats could keep the devil prisoner, bats did not need to fly through doorways when the tower had so many windows, and they abandoned their project half-finished.

  She climbed over the uncompleted barricade, scratching her leg as she did so. She watched the tiny beads of blood appear in a curving line and then looked away. And now, up? To the bell-tower where hung bells which never rang? And then she saw a door to one side, a wooden door free of spider webs, as if it were often used. She went to it and pushed it open, revealing steps which led down into darkness. She left the door open behind her, for the little light its being open provided, and descended the steps. They were shallow steps, but there were a great many of them. Her legs began to ache from the seemingly endless descent.

  At the bottom was a huge chamber, she could not tell how large, poorly lit by torches burning smokily in wall niches. She saw the coffin at once, and went to it. It was open and inside, his slouch hat discarded but still clothed in cape and boots, was the man she had run from in the night; the man her mother had loved, or served.

  A bat flew at her head, silent and deadly.
She ducked, but felt the edge of its leathery wings across her cheek. She turned and ran for the stairs; the bat did not pursue her. Upstairs, in the daylight, she rested and thought of what she had seen. She thought of his cruel face, and of his blood-red lips. Slowly she licked her own dry lips and, unconsciously, her hand went towards her throat. Was he the devil, or something else? The devil could not be killed, but something else…

  Her hands were covered with tiny cuts and full of splinters when she was done, but she had her weapon: a large, sharply pointed piece of wood. Outside there was a pile of rubble and she found a brick. An old woman in black, an early riser, glared at her suspiciously as she passed, but said nothing.

  When she entered the chamber again the bat swooped at her and flew around her head. She ducked to keep it from her eyes, but did not let it deter her. She put the brick down to grasp the wooden stake with both dirty, bloody hands and plunge it into the man's heart. She was blinded by her hair, and then by her own blood as the bat bit and tore at her head, but finally the stake was anchored and she was rewarded with a low moan from her victim. The bat cluttered once, a screech of defeat, and flapped away. She raised the brick and brought it down with all her might on the stake.

  There was a scream, which seemed to come from the walls around her, and then a fountain of blood spattered her chest, arms and head. She kept pounding, unwilling or unable to stop, until the stake must have been driven entirely through him, and then, triumphant, she threw the brick away and stood, panting, watching the still bubbling blood. It was very quiet. And then the thirst assailed her, sweeping away all pains and triumphs with its intensity. She sank to her knees, laid her face to his chest, and drank and drank until she was sated.

  Glenda opened her eyes. The room was empty and sunlight lay warm on the red bricks and white walls of the room. Everything was hard and clear to her now; the fever must have passed. Things had a diamond edge on them, with textures and solidity she had never noticed before.

  Debbie came in, from off the balcony, looking startled to see Glenda sitting up. "Well! How do you feel? You really had us worried."