Blood Is Not Enough Read online

  But now it was different. The friendliness here was genuine, I was sure of it. The smile of Tweedy, of the Walrus, had performed a miracle. Carl had risen from his tomb. I was in honest awe.

  “Delighted, old chap!” said Tweedy.

  They accepted their drinks with obvious pleasure, and we completed the introductions as they sat down to join us. I detected a strong smell of fish when Tweedy sat down beside me but, oddly, I didn’t find it offensive in the least. I was glad he’d chosen me to sit by. He turned and smiled at me, and my heart melted a little more.

  It soon turned out that the drinking we’d done before had only scratched the surface. Tweedy and Farr were magnificent boozers, and their gusto encouraged us all to follow suit.

  We drank absurd toasts and were delighted to discover that Tweedy was an incredible raconteur. His specialty was outrageous fantasy: wild tales involving incongruous objects, events, and characters. His invention was endless.

  ’The time has come,’ the Walrus said,

  ’To talk of many things:

  Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—

  Of cabbages—and kings—

  And why the sea is boiling hot—

  And whether pigs have wings.’

  We laughed and drank, and drank and laughed, and I began to wonder why in hell I’d spent my life being such a gloomy, moody son of a bitch, been such a distrustful and suspicious bastard, when the whole secret of everything, the whole core secret, was simply to enjoy it, to take it as it came.

  I looked around and grinned, and I didn’t care if it was a foolish grin. Everybody looked all right, everybody looked swell, everybody looked better than I’d ever seen them look before.

  Irene looked happy, honestly and truly happy. She, too, had found the secret. No more pills for Irene, I thought. Now that she knows the secret, now that she’s met Tweedy who’s given her the secret, she’ll have no more need of those goddamn pills.

  And I couldn’t believe Horace and Mandie. They had their arms around each other, and their bodies were pressed close together, and they rocked as one being when they laughed at Tweedy’s wonderful stories. No more nagging for Mandie, I thought, and no more cringing for Horace, now they’ve learned the secret.

  And then I looked at Carl, laughing and relaxed and absolutely free of care, absolutely unchilled, finally, at last, after years of—

  And then I looked at Carl again.

  And then I looked down at my drink, and then I looked at my knees, and then I looked out at the sea, sparkling, clean, remote and impersonal.

  And then I realized it had grown cold, quite cold, and that there wasn’t a bird or a cloud in the sky.

  The sea was wet as wet could be,

  The sands were dry as dry.

  You could not see a cloud, because

  No cloud was in the sky:

  No birds were flying overhead—

  There were no birds to fly.

  That part of the poem was, after all, a perfect description of a lifeless earth. It sounded beautiful at first, it sounded benign. But then you read it again and you realized that Carroll was describing barrenness and desolation. Suddenly Carl’s voice broke through and I heard him say: “Hey, that’s a hell of an idea, Tweedy! By God, we’d love to! Wouldn’t we, gang?”

  The others broke out in an affirmative chorus and they all started scrambling to their feet around me. I looked up at them, like someone who’s been awakened from sleep in a strange place, and they grinned down at me like loons.

  “Come on, Phil!” cried Irene.

  Her eyes were bright and shining, but it wasn’t with happiness. I could see that now.

  ’It seems a shame,’ the Walrus said,

  ’To play them such a trick …’

  I blinked my eyes and stared at them, one after the other.

  “Old Phil’s had a little too much to drink!” cried Mandie, laughing. “Come on, old Phil! Come on and join the party!” “What party?” I asked.

  I couldn’t seem to get located. Everything seemed disorientated and grotesque.

  “For Christ’s sake, Phil,” said Carl, “Tweedy and Farr, here, have invited us to join their party. There’s no more drinks left, and they’ve got plenty!”

  I set my plastic cup down carefully on the sand. If they would just shut up for a moment, I thought, I might be able to get the fuzz out of my head.

  “Come along, sir!” boomed Tweedy jovially. “It’s only a pleasant walk!”

  ‘O oysters come and walk with us,’

  The walrus did beseech…

  ‘A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,

  Along the briny beach …’

  He was smiling at me, but the smile didn’t work anymore.

  “You cannot do with more than four,” I told him.

  “Uhm? What’s that?”

  ’… we cannot do with more than four,

  And give a hand to each.’

  “I said, ‘You cannot do with more than four.’” “He’s right, you know,” said Farr, the Carpenter.

  “Well, uhm, then,” said the Walrus, “if you feel you really can’t come, old chap …”

  “What, in Christ’s name, are you all talking about?” asked Mandie.

  “He’s hung up on that goddamn poem,” said Carl. “Lewis Carroll’s got the yellow bastard scared.”

  “Don’t be such a party pooper, Phil!” said Mandie.

  “To hell with him,” said Carl. And he started off, and all the others followed him. Except Irene.

  “Are you sure you really don’t want to come, Phil?” she asked.

  She looked frail and thin against the sunlight. I realized there really wasn’t much of her, and that what there was had taken a terrible beating.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t. Are you sure you want to go?”

  “Of course I do, Phil.” I thought of the pills.

  “I suppose you do,” I said. “I suppose there’s really no stopping you.” “No, Phil, there isn’t.”

  And then she stooped and kissed me. Kissed me very gently, and I could feel the dry, chapped surface of her lips and the faint warmth of her breath. I stood.

  “I wish you’d stay,” I said. “I can’t,” she said.

  And then she turned and ran after the others.

  I watched them growing smaller and smaller on the beach, following the Walrus and the Carpenter. I watched them come to where the beach curved around the bluff, and watched them disappear behind the bluff.

  I looked up at the sky. Pure blue. Impersonal.

  “What do you think of this?” I asked it.

  Nothing. It hadn’t even noticed.

  ’Now, if you’re ready, oysters dear,

  We can begin to feed.’

  ’But not on us!’the oysters cried,

  Turning a little blue,

  ’After such kindness, that would be

  A dismal thing to do!’

  A dismal thing to do.

  I began to run up the beach, toward the bluff. I stumbled now and then because I had had too much to drink. Far too much to drink. I heard small shells crack under my shoes, and the sand made whipping noises.

  I fell, heavily, and lay there gasping on the beach. My heart pounded in my chest. I was too old for this sort of footwork. I hadn’t had any real exercise in years. I smoked too much and I drank too much. I did all the wrong things. I didn’t do any of the right things.

  I pushed myself up a little and then I let myself down again. My heart was pounding hard enough to frighten me. I could feel it in my chest, frantically pumping, squeezing blood in and spurting blood out.

  Like an oyster pulsing in the sea.

  ’Shall we be trotting home again?’

  My heart was like an oyster.

  I got up, fell up, and began to run again, weaving widely, my mouth open and the air burning my throat. I was coated with sweat, streaming with it, and it felt icy in the cold wind.

  ’Shall we be trotting home again?’

>   I rounded the bluff and then I stopped and stood swaying, and then I dropped to my knees.

  The pure blue of the sky was unmarked by a single bird or cloud, and nothing stirred on the whole vast stretch of the beach.

  But answer came there none—

  And this was scarcely odd, because …

  Nothing stirred, but they were there. Irene and Mandie and Carl and Horace were there, and four others, too. Just around the bluff.

  ’We cannot do with more than four …

  But the Walrus and the Carpenter had taken two trips.

  I began to crawl toward them on my knees. My heart, my oyster heart, was pounding too hard to allow me to stand.

  The other four had had a picnic, too, very like our own. They, too, had plastic cups and plates, and they, too, had brought bottles. They had sat and waited for the return of the Walrus and the Carpenter.

  Irene was right in front of me. Her eyes were open and stared at, but did not see, the sky. The pure blue uncluttered sky. There were a few grains of sand in her left eye. Her face was almost clear of blood. There were only a few flecks of it on her lower chin. The spray from the huge wound in her chest seemed to have traveled mainly downward and to the right. I stretched out my arm and touched her hand.

  “Irene,” I said.

  But answer came there none—

  And this was scarcely odd, because

  They’d eaten every one.

  I looked up at the others. Like Irene, they were, all of them, dead. The Walrus and the Carpenter had eaten the oysters and left the shells.

  The Carpenter never found any firewood, and so they’d eaten them raw. You can eat oysters raw if you want to.

  I said her name once more, just for the record, and then I stood and turned from them and walked to the bluff. I rounded the bluff and the beach stretched before me, vast, smooth, empty, and remote.

  Even as I ran upon it, away from them, it was remote.

  I distrusted the Alice books from the start. My grown-ups tried to pretend they were children’s books and that I should and would enjoy them, so they officially shuffled them in with the Oz and Pooh collection, but I knew better; I knew they were dangerous and I opened them only rarely and gingerly.

  Of course Tenniel’s Jabberwock leapt out at me from the start (as it has, I am sure, at many another innocent child), but there were many other horrors: the simultaneously fading and grinning cat; the impeccably cruel Duchess with her “little boy"; something about Bill the Lizard floating helplessly over the chimney; the crazed creatures at the Tea Party—the worst part of it was the thing that pervaded all those images and all the other images in the books (which I knew weren’t about any “Wonderland” at all, but about the very world I was trying to grow up in, only seen from some terrifyingly sophisticated point of view); the weird convincingness of Carroll’s horrible message that nothing, nothing soever, made any sense at all!

  If it hadn’t been for brave, stolid Alice (bless her stout, young, British heart), herself a child, I don’t think I could have survived those goddamn books.

  But there is no Alice in this story.

  Gahan Wilson

  THE SILVER COLLAR

  Garry Kilworth

  “The Silver Collar” is a departure for Garry, who usually writes contemporary or futuristic science fiction. It is the most traditional of the stories in this volume, a gothic fantasy in which the vampire main character is never on stage. It shows the folly of those who believe love can conquer all.

  The remote Scottish island came into view just as the sun was setting. Outside the natural harbor, the sea was kicking a little in its traces and tossing its white manes in the dying light. My small outboard motor struggled against the ebbing tide, sometimes whining as it raced in the air as a particularly low trough left it without water to push against the blades of its propeller. By the time I reached the jetty, the moon was up and casting its chill light upon the shore and purple-heather hills beyond. There was a smothered atmosphere to this lonely place of rock and thin soil, as if the coarse grass and hardy plants had descended as a complete layer to wrap the ruggedness in a faded cover, hiding the nakedness from mean, inquisitive eyes.

  As the agents had promised, he was waiting on the quay, his tall, emaciated figure stark against the gentle upward slope of the hinterland: a splinter of granite from the rock on which he made his home.

  “I’ve brought the provisions,” I called, as he took the line and secured it.

  “Good. Will you come up to the croft? There’s a peat fire going—it’s warm, and I have some scotch. Nothing like a dram before an open fire, with the smell of burning peat filling the room.”

  “I could just make it out with the tide,” I said. “Perhaps I should go now.” It was not that I was reluctant to accept the invitation from this eremite, this strange recluse—on the contrary, he interested me—but I had to be sure to get back to the mainland that night, since I was to crew a fishing vessel the next day.

  “You have time for a dram,” his voice drifted away on the cold wind that had sprung up within minutes, like a breath from the mouth of the icy north. I had to admit to myself that a whisky, by the fire, would set me on my toes for the return trip, and his tone had a faintly insistent quality about it which made the offer difficult to refuse.

  “Just a minute then—and thanks. You lead the way.”

  I followed his lean, lithe figure up through the heather, which scratched at my ankles through my seasocks. The path was obviously not well used and I imagined he spent his time in and around his croft, for even in the moonlight I could discern no other tracks incising the soft shape of the hill.

  We reached his dwelling and he opened the wooden door, allowing me to enter first. Then, seating me in front of the fire, he poured me a generous whisky before sitting down himself. I listened to the wind, locked outside the timber and turf croft, and waited for him to speak.

  He said, “John, is’t it? They told me on the radio.”

  “Yes—and you’re Samual.”

  “Sam. You must call me Sam.”

  I told him I would and there was a period of silence while we regarded each other. Peat is not a consistent fuel, and tends to spurt and spit colorful plumes of flame as the gases escape, having been held prisoner from the seasons for God knows how long. Nevertheless, I was able to study my host in the brief periods of illumination that the fire afforded. He could have been any age, but I knew he was my senior by a great many years. The same thoughts must have been passing through his own head, for he remarked, “John, how old are you? I would guess at twenty.”

  “Nearer thirty, Sam. I was twenty-six last birthday.” He nodded, saying that those who live a solitary life, away from others, have great difficulty in assessing the ages of people they do meet. Recent events slipped from his memory quite quickly, while the past seemed so close.

  He leaned forward, into the hissing fire, as if drawing a breath from the ancient atmospheres it released into the room. Behind him, the earthen walls of the croft, held together by rough timbers and unhewn stones, seemed to move closer to his shoulder, as if ready to support his words with confirmation. I sensed a story coming. I recognized the pose from being in the company of sailors on long voyages and hoped he would finish before I had to leave.

  “You’re a good-looking boy,” he said. “So was I, once upon a time.” He paused to stir the flames and a blue-green cough from the peat illuminated his face. The skin was taut over the high cheekbones and there was a wanness to it, no doubt brought about by the inclement weather of the isles—the lack of sunshine and the constant misty rain that comes in as white veils from the north. Yes, he had been handsome—still was. I was surprised by his youthful features and suspected that he was not as old as he implied.

  “A long time ago,” he began, “when we had horse-drawn vehicles and things were different, in more ways than one …”

  A sharp whistling note—the wind squeezing through two tightly packed logs
in the croft—distracted me. Horse-drawn vehicles? What was this? A second-hand tale, surely? Yet he continued in the first person.

  “… gas lighting in the streets. A different set of values. A different set of beliefs. We were more pagan then. Still had our roots buried in dark thoughts. Machines have changed all that. Those sort of pagan, mystical ideas can’t share a world with machines. Unnatural beings can only exist close to the natural world and nature’s been displaced.

  “Yes, a different world—different things to fear. I was afraid as a young man—the reasons may seem trivial to you, now, in your time. I was afraid of, well, getting into something I couldn’t get out of. Woman trouble, for instance—especially one not of my class. You understand?

  “I got involved once. Must have been about your age, or maybe a bit younger since I’d only just finished my apprenticeship and was a journeyman at the time. Silversmith. You knew that? No, of course you didn’t. A silversmith, and a good one too. My master trusted me with one of his three shops, which puffed my pride a bit, I don’t mind telling you. Anyway, it happened that I was working late one evening, when I heard the basement doorbell jangle.

  “I had just finished lighting the gas lamps in the workshop at the back, so I hurried to the counter where a customer was waiting. She had left the door open and the sounds from the street were distracting, the basement of course being on a level with the cobbled road. Coaches were rumbling by and the noise of street urchins and flower sellers was fighting for attention with the foghorns from the river. As politely as I could, I went behind the customer and closed the door. Then I turned to her and said, ‘Yes madam? Can I be of service?’

  “She was wearing one of those large satin cloaks that only ladies of quality could afford and she threw back the hood to reveal one of the most beautiful faces I have ever seen in my life. There was a purity to her complexion that went deeper than her flawless skin, much deeper. And her eyes—how can I describe her eyes?—they were like black mirrors and you felt you could see the reflection of your own soul in them. Her hair was dark—coiled on her head—and it contrasted sharply with that complexion, pale as a winter moon, and soft, soft as the velvet I used for polishing the silver.