Merrick by Anne Rice Page A

secretive manner, and the casual fearless way in which they regarded me, it would have given you chills.”
    “No doubt of it,” he said. “And you do mean you actually saw them, as though they were truly there. It wasn’t simply an idea.”
    “No, my dear fellow, I saw them. They looked real. Of course they didn’t look entirely like other people, you must understand. But they were there!”
    I went on to explain my return to the hotel, the altar, Papa Legba, and then my coming home, and, once again, I described the music of the harpsichord and the singing of the caged birds.
    Louis grew visibly sad at this, but again, he did not interrupt.
    “As I told you before,” I said, “I recognized the music. It was Mozart’s first sonata. And the playing was unrealistic and full of—.”
    “Tell me.”
    “But you must have heard it. It was haunting. I mean a long, long time ago you must have heard such music, when it was first played here, for hauntings only repeat what occurred once upon a time.”
    “It was full of anger,” he said softly, as though the very word “anger” made him hush his tone.
    “Yes, that was it, anger. It was Claudia playing, was it not?”
    He didn’t respond. He seemed stricken by his memories and considerations. Then finally he spoke.
    “But you don’t know that Claudia made you hear these sounds,” he said. “It might have been Merrick and her spell.”
    “You’re right on that score, but you see, we don’t know that Merrick caused all the other things, either. The altar, the candle, even my blood upon the handkerchief—these things don’t prove that Merrick sent the spirits after me. We have to think about the ghost of Great Nananne.”
    “You mean this ghost might have interfered with us, entirely on her own?”
    I nodded. “What if this ghost wants to protect Merrick? What if this ghost does not want her granddaughter to conjure the soul of a vampire? How can we know?”
    He seemed on the edge of total despair. He remained poised and somewhat collected, but his face was badly stricken, and then he seemed to pull himself together, and he looked to me to speak, as if no words could express what he felt.
    “Louis, listen to me. I have only a tenuous understanding of what I’m about to say, but it’s most important.”
    “Yes, what is it?” He seemed at once animated and humble, sitting upright in the chair, urging me to go on.
    “We’re creatures of this earth, you and I. We are vampires. But we’re material. Indeed, we are richly entangled with Homo sapiens in that we thrive on the blood of that species alone. Whatever spirit inhabits our bodies, governs our cells, enables us to live—whatever spirit that does all those things is mindless and might as well be nameless, insofar as we know. You do agree on these points. . . .”
    “I do,” he said, obviously eager for me to go on.
    “What Merrick does is magic, Louis. It is from another realm.”
    He made no response.
    “It’s magic that we’re asking her to do for us. Voodoo is magic, so is Candomble. So is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.”
    He was taken aback, but fascinated.
    “God is magic,” I continued, “and so are the saints. Angels are magic. And ghosts, if they be truly the apparitions of souls who once lived on earth, are magic as well.”
    He absorbed these words respectfully and remained silent.
    “You understand,” I continued, “I don’t say that all these magical elements are equal. What I am saying is that what they have in common is that they are divorced from materiality, divorced from the earth, and from the flesh. Of course they interact with matter. They interact with the flesh. But they partake of the realm of pure spirituality where other laws—laws unlike our physical earthly laws—might exist.”
    “I see your meaning,” he said. “You’re warning me that this woman can do things that will baffle us as easily as they might baffle mortal men.”
    “Yes, that is my intent