Anne Rice - Vampire Chronicles 09 - Merrick

Merrick

By Anne Rice

FOR

Stan Rice

And

Christopher Rice

And

Nancy Rice Diamond

THE TALAMASCA

Investigators of the Paranormal

We watch

And we are almays here.

LONDON AMSTERDAM ROME

MERRICK

Proem

MY NAME is David Talbot.

Do any of you remember me as the Superior General of the Talamasca, the

Order of psychic detectives whose motto was "We watch and we are always here"?

It has a charm, doesn't it, that motto?

The Talamasca has existed for over a thousand years.

I don't know how the Order began. I don't really know all the secrets of

the Order. I do know however that I served it most of my mortal life.

It was in the Talamasca Motherhouse in England that the Vampire Lestat

first made himself known to me. He came into my study one winter night and

caught me quite unawares.

I learnt very quickly that it was one thing to read and write about the

supernatural and quite another to see it with your own eyes.

But that was a long time ago.

I'm in another physical body now.

And that physical body has been transformed by Lestat's powerful vampiric

blood.

I'm among the most dangerous of the vampires, and one of the most trusted.

Even the wary vampire Armand revealed to me the story of his life. Perhaps

you've read the biography of Armand which I released into the world.

When that story ended, Lestat had wakened from a long sleep in New Orleans

to listen to some very beautiful and seductive music.

It was music that lulled him back again into unbroken silence as he

retreated once more to a convent building to lie upon a dusty marble floor.

There were many vampires then in the city of New Orleans-vagabonds, rogues,

foolish young ones who had come to catch a glimpse of Lestat in his seeming

helplessness. They menaced the mortal population. They annoyed the elders

among us who wanted invisibility and the right to hunt in peace.

All those invaders are gone now.

Some were destroyed, others merely frightened. And the elders who had come

to offer some solace to the sleeping Lestat have gone their separate ways.

As this story begins, only three of us remain in New Orleans. And we three

are the sleeping Lestat, and his two faithful fledglings-Louis de Pointe du

Lac, and I, David Talbot, the author of this tale.

1

"WHY DO You ask me to do this thing?"

She sat across the marble table from me, her back to the open doors of the

café.

I struck her as a wonder. But my requests had distracted her. She no longer

stared at me, so much as she looked into my eyes.

She was tall, and had kept her dark-brown hair loose and long all her life,

save for a leather barrette such as she wore now, which held only her

forelocks behind her head to flow down her back. She wore gold hoops dangling

from her small earlobes, and her soft white summer clothes had a gypsy flare

to them, perhaps because of the red scarf tied around the waist of her full

cotton skirt.

"And to do such a thing for such a being?" she asked warmly, not angry with

me, no, but so moved that she could not conceal it, even with her smooth

compelling voice. "To bring up a spirit that may be filled with anger and a

desire for vengeance, to do this, you ask me,for Louis de Pointe du Lac, one

who is already beyond life himself?"

"Who else can I ask, Merrick?" I answered. "Who else can do such a thing?"

I pronounced her name simply, in the American style, though years ago when

we'd first met, she had spelled it Merrique and pronounced it with the slight

touch of her old French.

There was a rough sound from the kitchen door, the creak of neglected

hinges. A wraith of a waiter in a soiled apron appeared at our side, his feet

scratching against the dusty flagstones of the floor.

"Rum," she said. "St. James. Bring a bottle of it."

He murmured something which even with my vampiric hearing I did not bother

to catch. And away he shuffled, leaving us alone again in the dimly lighted

room, with all its long doors thrown open to the Rue St. Anne.

It was vintage New Orleans, the little establishment. Overhead fans churned

lazily, and the floor had not been cleaned in a hundred years.

The twilight was softly fading, the air filled with the fragrances of the

Quarter and the sweetness of spring. What a kind miracle it was that she had

chosen such a place, and that it was so strangely deserted on such a divine

evening as this.

Her gaze was steady but never anything but soft.

"Louis de Pointe du Lac would see a ghost now," she said, musing, "as if

his suffering isn't enough."

Not only were her words sympathetic, but also her low and confidential

tone. She felt pity for him.

"Oh, yes," she said without allowing me to speak. "I pity him, and I know

how badly he wants to see the face of this dead child vampire whom he loved so

much." She raised her eyebrows thoughtfully. "You come with names which are

all but legend. You come out of secrecy, you come out of a miracle, and you

come close, and with a request."

"Do it, then, Merrick, if it doesn't harm you," I said. "I'm not here to

bring harm to you. God in Heaven help me. Surely you know as much."

"And what of harm coming to your Louis?" she asked, her words spoken slowly

as she pondered. "A ghost can speak dreadful things to those who call it, and

this is the ghost of a monster child who died by violence. You ask a potent

and terrible thing."

I nodded. All she said was true.

"Louis is a being obsessed," I said. "It's taken years for his obsession to

obliterate all reason. Now he thinks of nothing else."

"And what if I do bring her up out of the dead? You think there will be a

resolution to the pain of either one?"

"I don't hope for that. I don't know. But anything is preferable to the

pain Louis suffers now. Of course I have no right to ask this of you, no right

to come to you at all.

"Yet we're all entangled-the Talamasca and Louis and I. And the Vampire

Lestat as well. It was from the very bosom of the Talamasca that Louis de

Pointe du Lac heard a story of the ghost of Claudia. It was to one of our own,

a woman named Jesse Reeves-you'll find her in the archives-that this ghost of

Claudia supposedly first appeared."

"Yes, I know the story," said Merrick. "It happened in the Rue Royale. You

sent Jesse Reeves to investigate the vampires. And Jesse Reeves came back with

a handful of treasures that were proof enough that a child named Claudia, an

immortal child, had once lived in the flat."

"Quite right," I answered. "I was wrong to send Jesse. Jesse was too young.

Jesse was never-." It was difficult for me to finish. "Jesse was never quite

as clever as you."

"People read it among Lestat's published tales and think it's fancy," she

said, musing, thinking, "all that about a diary, a rosary, wasn't it, and an

old doll. And we have those things, don't we? They're in the vault in England.

We didn't have a Louisiana Motherhouse in those days. You put them in the

vault yourself "

"Can you do it?" I asked. "Will you do it? That's more to the point. I have

no doubt that you can."

She wasn't ready to answer. But we had made a great beginning here, she and

I.

Oh, how I had missed her! This was more tantalizing than I'd ever expected,

to be locked once more in conversation with her. And with pleasure I doted

upon the changes in her: that her French accent was completely gone now and

that she sounded almost British, and that from her long years of study

overseas. She'd spent some of those years in England with me.

"You know that Louis saw you," I said gently. "You know that he sent me to

ask you. You know that he knew of your powers from the warning he caught from

your eyes?"

She didn't respond.

"'I've seen a true witch,'" he said when he came to me. 'She wasn't afraid

of me. She said she'd call up the dead to defend herself if I didn't leave her

alone.'"

She nodded, regarding me with great seriousness.

"Yes, all that's the truth," she answered under her breath. "He crossed my

path, you might say." She was mulling it over. "But I've seen Louis de Pointe

du Lac many a time. I was a child when I first saw him, and now you and I

speak of this for the first time."

I was quite amazed. I should have known she would surprise me at once.

I admired her immensely. I couldn't disguise it. I loved the simplicity of

her appearance, her white cotton scoop neck blouse with its simple short

sleeves and the necklace of black beads around her neck.

Looking into her green eyes, I was suddenly overcome with shame for what

I'd done, revealing myself to her. Louis had not forced me to approach her. I

had done this of my own accord. But I don't intend to begin this narrative by

dwelling on that shame.

Let me say only that we'd been more than simple companions in the Talamasca

together. We'd been mentor and pupil, I and she, and almost lovers, once, for

a brief while. Such a brief while.

She'd come as a girl to us, a vagrant descendant of the clan of the

Mayfairs, out of an African American branch of that family, coming down from

white witches she scarcely knew, an octoroon of exceptional beauty, a barefoot

child when she wandered into the Motherhouse in Louisiana, when she said,

"I've heard of you people, I need you. I can see things. I can speak with the

dead."

That had been over twenty years ago, it seemed to me now.

I'd been the Superior General of the Order, settled into the life of a

gentlemanly administrator, with all the comforts and drawbacks of routine. A

telephone call had wakened me in the night. It had been from my friend and

fellow scholar, Aaron Lightner.

"David," he'd said, "you have to come. This is the genuine article. This is

a witch of such power I've no words to describe it. David, you must come...."

There was no one in those days whom I respected any more deeply than Aaron

Lightner. I've loved three beings in all my years, both as human and vampire.

Aaron Lightner was one of them. Another was, and is, the Vampire Lestat. The

Vampire Lestat brought me miracles with his love, and broke my mortal life

forever. The Vampire Lestat made me immortal and uncommonly strong for it, a

nonpareil among the vampires.

As for the third, it was Merrick Mayfair, though Merrick I had tried my

damndest to forget.

But we are speaking of Aaron, my old friend Aaron with his wavy white hair,

quick gray eyes, and his penchant for southern blue-and-white-striped

seersucker suits. We are speaking of her, of the long ago child Merrick, who

seemed as exotic as the lush tropical flora and fauna of her home.

"All right, old fellow, I'm coming, but couldn't this have waited till

morning?" I remembered my stodginess and Aaron's good-natured laughter.

"David, what's happened to you, old man?" he'd responded. "Don't tell me

what you're doing now, David. Let me tell you. You fell asleep while reading

some nineteenth-century book on ghosts, something evocative and comforting.

Let me guess. The author's Sabine BaringGould. You haven't been out of the

Motherhouse in six months, have you? Not even for a luncheon in town. Don't

deny it, David, you live as if your life's finished."

I had laughed. Aaron spoke with such a gentle voice. It wasn't Sabine

Baring-Gould I'd been reading, but it might have been. I think it had been a

supernatural tale by Algernon Blackwood. And Aaron had been right about the

length of time since I'd stepped outside of our sanctified walls.

"Where's your passion, David? Where's your commitment?" Aaron had pressed.

"David, the child's a witch. Do you think I use such words lightly? Forget the

family name for a moment and all we know about them. This is something that

would astound even our Mayfairs, though she'll never be known to them if I

have my say in matters. David, this child can summon spirits. Open your Bible

and turn to the Book of Samuel. This is the Witch of Endor. And you're being

as cranky as the spirit of Samuel when the witch raised him from his sleep.

Get out of bed and cross the Atlantic. I need you here now."

The Witch of Endor. I didn't need to consult my Bible. Every member of the

Talamasca knew that story only too well.

King Saul, in fear of the might of the Philistines, goes, before the

dreaded battle, to "a woman with a familiar spirit" and asks that she raise

Samuel the Prophet from the dead. "Why has thou disquieted me, to bring me

up?" demands the ghostly prophet, and in short order he predicts that King

Saul and both his sons will join him in death on the following day.

The Witch of Endor. And so I had always thought of Merrick, no matter how

close to her I'd become later on. She was Merrick Mayfair, the Witch of Endor.

At times I'd addressed her as such in semi-official memos and often in brief

notes.

In the beginning, she'd been a tender marvel. I had heeded Aaron's summons,

packing, flying to Louisiana, and setting foot for the first time in Oak

Haven, the splendid plantation home which had become our refuge outside of New

Orleans, on the old River Road.

What a dreamy event it had been. On the plane I had read my Old Testament:

King Saul's sons had been slain in battle. Saul had fallen on his sword. Was I

superstitious after all? My life I'd given to the Talamasca, but even before

I'd begun my apprenticeship I'd seen and commanded spirits on my own. They

weren't ghosts, you understand. They were nameless, never corporeal, and wound

up for me with the names and rituals of Brazilian Candomble magic, in which

I'd plunged so recklessly in my youth.

But I'd let that power grow cold inside me as scholarship and devotion to

others claimed me. I had abandoned the mysteries of Brazil for the equally

wondrous world of archives, relics, libraries, organization, and tutelage,

lulling others into dusty reverence for our methods and our careful ways. The

Talamasca was so vast, so old, so loving in its embrace. Even Aaron had no

clue as to my old powers, not in those days, though many a mind was open to

his psychic sensibility. I would know the girl for what she was.

It had been raining when we reached the Motherhouse, our car plunging into

the long avenue of giant oaks that led from the levee road to the immense

double doors. How green had been this world even in darkness, with twisted oak

branches dipping into the high grass. I think the long gray streaks of Spanish

moss touched the roof of the car.

The electric power had gone out that night with the storm, they told me.

"Rather charming," Aaron had said as he greeted me. He'd been white-haired

already by then, the consummate older gentleman, eternally good-natured,

almost sweet. "Lets you see things as they were in the old days, don't you

think?"

Only oil lamps and candles illuminated the large square rooms. I had seen

the flicker in the fanlight above the entranceway as we approached. Lanterns

swayed in the wind in the deep galleries that wrapped the great square house

about on its first and second floors.

Before entering, I had taken my time, rain or no rain, to inspect this

marvelous tropical mansion, impressed with its simple pillars. Once there had

been sugarcane for miles all around it; out back beyond the flower beds, still

vaguely colored in the downpour, were weathered outbuildings where once slaves

had lived.

She came down barefoot to meet me, in a lavender dress covered with pink

flowers, scarcely the witch at all.

Her eyes couldn't have been more mysterious had she worn the kohl of a

Hindu princess to set off the color. One saw the green of the iris, and the

dark circle around it, as well as the black pupil within. A marvelous eye, all

the more vivid due to her light-tan creamy skin. Her hair had been brushed

back from her forehead, and her slender hands merely hung at her sides. How at

ease she'd seemed in the first moments.

"David Talbot," she had said to me almost formally. I'd been enchanted by

the confidence in her soft voice.

They couldn't break her of the barefoot habit. It had been dreadfully

enticing, those bare feet on the wool carpet. She'd grown up in the country, I

thought, but no, they said, it was merely in an old tumbledown part of New

Orleans where there were no sidewalks anymore and the weather-beaten houses

were neglected and the blossoming and poisonous oleander grew as big as trees.

She had lived there with her godmother, Great Nananne, the witch who'd

taught her all the things that she knew. Her mother, a powerful seer, known to

me then only by the mysterious name of Cold Sandra, had been in love with an

explorer. There was no father of memory. She'd never gone to a real school.

"Merrick Mayfair," I'd said warmly. I took her in my arms.

She had been tall for her fourteen years, with beautifully shaped breasts

quite natural under her simple cotton shift, and her soft dry hair had been

loose down her back. She might have been a Spanish beauty to anyone outside of

this bizarre part of the Southland, where the history of the slaves and their

free descendants was so full of complex alliances and erotic romance. But any

New Orleanean could see African blood in her by the lovely café au lait of her

skin.

Sure enough, when I poured the cream into the thick chicory coffee that

they gave me, I understood those words.

"All my people are colored," she said, with the French in her voice then.

"Those that pass for white leave and go north. That's been happening forever.

They don't want Great Nananne to visit. They don't want anyone to know. I

could pass for white. But what about the family? What about all that's been

handed down? I would never leave Great Nananne. I came here 'cause she told me

to come."

She had a temptress's poise as she sat there, small in the great winged

chair of oxblood leather, a tiny tantalizing gold chain around her ankle,

another with a small diamond-studded cross around her neck.

"See these pictures?" she said invitingly. She had them in a shoe box which

rested in her lap. "There's no witchcraft in them. You can look as you

please."

She laid them out on the table for me, daguerreotypes-stark clear

photographs on glass, each one fitted into a crumbling little case of gutter

perche, heavily embossed with rings of flowers or grapevines, many of which

could be closed and clasped shut like little books.

"They come from the 1840s," she said, "and they're all our people. One of

our own took these pictures. He was known for taking portraits. They loved

him. He left some stories-I know where they are. They're all written with

beautiful handwriting. They're in a box in the attic of Great Nananne's

house."

She had moved to the edge of the chair, her knees poking out from under her

skimpy hem. Her hair made a big mass of shadows behind her. Her hairline was

clean and her forehead smooth and beautiful. Though the night had been only

cool, there was a fire in the fireplace, and the room, with its shelves of

books and its random Grecian sculptures, had been fragrant and comfortable,

conducive to a spell.

Aaron had been watching her proudly, yet full of concern.

"See, these are all my people from the old days." She might have been

laying out a deck of cards. The flash of the shadows was lovely on her oval

face and the distinct bones of her cheeks. "You see, they kept together. But

as I said, the ones that could pass are long gone. Look what they gave up,

just think of it, so much history. See this?"

I studied the small picture, glinting in the light of the oil lamp.

"This is Lucy Nancy Marie Mayfair, she was the daughter of a white man, but

we never knew much about him. All along there would be white men. Always white

men. What these women did for white men. My mother went to South America with

a white man. I went with them. I remember the jungles." Had she hesitated,

picking up something from my thoughts, perhaps, or merely my doting face?

I would never forget my own early years of exploration in the Amazon. I

suppose I didn't want to forget, though nothing had made me more painfully

conscious of my old age than to think of those adventures with gun and camera,

lived on the bottom side of the world. I never dreamt then that I would return

to uncharted jungles with her.

I had stared again at the old glass daguerreotypes. Not a one among any of

these individuals looked anything but rich-top hats and full taffeta skirts

against studio backdrops of drapery and lavish plants. Here was a young woman

beautiful as Merrick was now, sitting so prim and upright, in a high-backed

Gothic chair. How to explain the remarkably clear evidence of African blood in

so many of them? It seemed no more in some than an uncommon brightness of the

eye against a darkened Caucasian face, yet it was there.

"Here, this is the oldest," she said, "this is Angelique Marybelle

Mayfair." A stately woman, dark hair parted in the middle, ornate shawl

covering her shoulders and full sleeves. In her fingers she clasped a barely

visible pair of spectacles and a folded fan.

"She's the oldest and finest picture that I have. She was a secret witch,

that's what they told me. There's secret witches and witches people come to.

She was the secret kind, but she was smart. They say she was lovers with a

white Mayfair who lived in the Garden District, and he was by blood her own

nephew. I come down from her and from him. Oncle Julien, that was his name. He

let his colored cousins call him Oncle Julien, instead of Monsieur Julien, the

way the other white men might have done."

Aaron had tensed but sought to hide it. Perhaps he could hide it from her,

but not from me.

So he's told her nothing of that dangerous Mayfair family. They haven't

spoken of it-the dreadful Garden District Mayfairs, a tribe with supernatural

powers, whom he had investigated for years. Our files on the Mayfairs went

back for centuries. Members of our Order had died at the hands of the Mayfair

Witches, as we were wont to call them. But this child mustn't know about them

through us, I had realized quite suddenly, at least not until Aaron had made

up his mind that such an intervention would serve the good of both parties,

and do no harm.

As it was, such a time never came to pass. Merrick's life was complete and

separate from that of the white Mayfairs. There is nothing of their story in

these pages that I now write.

But on that long ago evening, Aaron and I had sought rather desperately to

make our minds blank for the little witch who sat before us.

I don't remember whether or not Merrick had glanced at us before she went

on.

"There are Mayfairs living in that Garden District house even now," she had

said matter-of-factly, "-white people, who never had much to do with us,

except through their lawyers." How worldly her little laugh had sounded-the

way people laugh when they speak of lawyers.

"The lawyers would come back of town with the money," she said with a shake

of her head. "And some of those lawyers were Mayfairs; too. The lawyers sent

Angelique Marybelle Mayfair north to a fine school, but she came home again to

live and die right here. I would never go to those white people." The remark

had been almost offhanded. She went on.

"But Great Nananne talks about Oncle Julien just as if he was living now,

and they all said it when I was growing up, that Oncle Julien was a kind man.

Seems he knew all his colored relations, and they said that man could kill his

enemies or yours with the look in his eye. He was a houn'gan if there ever was

one. I have more to say about him by and by."

She had glanced quite suddenly at Aaron and I'd seen him glance away from

her almost shyly. I wonder if she had seen the future-that the Talamasca File

on the Mayfair Witches would swallow Aaron's life, as surely as the Vampire

Lestat had swallowed mine.

I wondered what she thought about Aaron's death even now, as we sat at the

cafe table, as I spoke softly to the handsome and welldefended woman whom that

little girl had become.

The feeble old waiter brought her the fifth of rum she had requested, the

St. James from Martinique, dark. I caught the powerful scent of it as he

filled her small, heavy octagonal glass. Memories flooded my mind. Not the

beginning with her, but other times.

She drank it just the way I knew she would, in the manner I remembered, as

if it were nothing but water. The waiter shuffled back to his hiding place.

She lifted the bottle before I could do it for her, and she filled the glass

again.

I watched her tongue move along the inside of her lip. I watched her large

searching eyes look up again into my face.

"Remember drinking rum with me?" she asked, almost smiling, but not quite.

She was far too tense, too alert for that just yet. "You remember," she said.

"I'm talking about those brief nights in the jungle. Oh, you are so right when

you say that the vampire is a human monster. You're still so very human. I can

see it in your expression. I can see it in your gestures. As for your body,

it's totally human. There isn't a clue. . ."

"There are clues," I said, contradicting her. "And as time passes you'll

see them. You'll become uneasy, and then fearful and, finally, accustomed.

Believe me, I know."

She raised her eyebrows, then accepted this. She took another sip and I

imagined how delicious it was for her. I knew that she did not drink every day

of her life, and when she did drink she enjoyed it very much.

"So many memories, beautiful Merrick," I whispered. It seemed paramount

that I not give in to them, that I concentrate on those memories which most

certainly enshrined her innocence and reminded me of a sacred trust.

To the end of Aaron's life, he had been devoted to her, though he seldom

spoke of it to me. What had she learnt of the tragic hit-and-run accident that

had caught Aaron unawares? I had been already gone out of the Talamasca, out

of Aaron's care, and out of life.

And to think we had lived such long mortal lives as scholars, Aaron and I.

We should have been past all mishap. Who would have dreamt that our research

would ensnare us and turn our destiny so dramatically from the dedication of

those long loyal years? But hadn't the same thing happened to another loyal

member of the Talamasca, my beloved student Jesse Reeves?

Back then, when Merrick had been the sultry child and I the amazed Superior

General, I had not thought my few remaining years held any great surprise.

Why had I not learnt from the story of Jesse? Jesse Reeves had been my

student even more surely than Merrick ever became, and the vampires had

swallowed Jesse whole and complete.

With great devotion Jesse had sent me one last letter, thick with

euphemisms, and of no real value to anyone else, letting me know that she

would never see me again. I had not taken Jesse's fate as a caution. I had

thought only that for the intense study of the vampire, Jesse Reeves had been

too young.

It was all past. Nothing remained of that heartbreak. Nothing remained of

those mistakes. My mortal life had been shattered, my soul soaring and then

fallen, my vampire life erasing all the small accomplishments and consolations

of the man I'd once been. Jesse was among us and I knew her secrets, and that

she'd always be quite faraway from me.

Anne Rice - Vampire Chronicles 09 - Merrick

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