Anne Rice - Interview with the Vampire

“Claudia had not moved. She lay like a Botticelli angel beside the unharmed boy. The other’s body already withered, the neck like a fractured stem, the heavy head falling now at an odd angle, the angle of death, into the pillow.

“But something was wrong. Lestat was staring at the ceiling. I could see his tongue between his teeth. He lay too still, the tongue, as it were, trying to get out of the mouth, trying to move past the barrier of the teeth and touch the lip. He appeared to shiver, his shoulders convulsing… then relaxing heavily; yet he did not move. A veil had fallen over his clear gray eyes. He was peering at the ceiling. Then a sound came out of him. I stepped forward from the shadows of the hallway, but Claudia said in a sharp hiss, ‘Go back!’

“ ‘Louis…’ he was saying. I could hear it now. ‘Louis… Louis…’

“ ‘Don’t you like it, Lestat?’ she asked him.

“ ‘Something’s wrong with it,’ he gasped, and his eyes widened as if the mere speaking were a colossal effort. He could not move. I saw it. He could not move at all. ‘Claudia!’ He gasped again, and his eyes rolled towards her.

“ ‘Don’t you like the taste of children’s blood…?’ she asked softly.

“ ‘Louis…’ he whispered, finally lifting his head just for an instant. It fell back on the couch. ‘Louis, it’s… it’s absinthe! Too much absinthe!’ he gasped. ‘She’s poisoned them with it. She’s poisoned me. Louis…’ He tried to raise his hand. I drew nearer, the table between us.

“ ‘Stay back!’ she said again. And now she slid off the couch and approached him, peering down into his face as he had peered at the child. ‘Absinthe, Father,’ she said, ‘and laudanum!’

“ ‘Demon!’ he said to her. ‘Louis… put me in my coffin.’ He struggled to rise. ‘Put me in my coffin!’ His voice was hoarse, barely audible. The hand fluttered, lifted, and fell back.

“ ‘I’ll put you in your coffin, Father,’ she said, as though she were soothing him. ‘I’ll put you in it forever.’ And then, from beneath the pillows of the couch, she drew a kitchen knife.

“ ‘Claudia! Don’t do this thing!’ I said to her. But she flashed at me a virulency I’d never seen in her face, and as I stood there paralyzed, she gashed his throat, and he let out a sharp, choking cry. ‘God!’ he shouted out. ‘God!’

“The blood poured out of him, down his shirt front, down his coat. It poured as it might never pour from a human being, all the blood with which he had filled himself before the child and from the child; and he kept turning his head, twisting, making the bubbling gash gape. She sank the knife into his chest now and he pitched forward, his mouth wide, his fangs exposed, both hands convulsively flying towards the knife, fluttering around its handle, slipping off its handle. He looked up at me, the hair falling down into his eyes. ‘Louis! Louis!’ He let out one more gasp and fell sideways on the carpet. She stood looking down at him. The blood flowed everywhere like water. He was groaning, trying to raise himself, one arm pinned beneath his chest, the other shoving at the floor. And now, suddenly, she flew at him and clamping both arms about his neck, bit deep into him as he struggled. ‘Louis, Louis!’ he gasped over and over, struggling, trying desperately to throw her off; but she rode him, her body lifted by his shoulder, hoisted and dropped, hoisted and dropped, until she pulled away; and, finding the floor quickly, she backed away from him, her hands to her lips, her eyes for the moment clouded, then clear. I turned away from her, my body convulsed by what I’d seen, unable to look any longer. ‘Louis!’ she said; but I only shook my head. For a moment, the whole house seemed to sway. But she said, ‘Look what’s happening to him!’

“He had ceased to move. He lay now on his back. And his entire body was shriveling, drying up, the skin thick and wrinkled, and so white that all the tiny veins showed through it. I gasped, but I could not take my eyes off it, even as the shape of the bones began to show through, his lips drawing back from his teeth, the flesh of his nose drying to two gaping holes. But his eyes, they remained the same, staring wildly at the ceiling, the irises dancing from side to side, even as the flesh cleaved to the bones, became nothing but a parchment wrapping for the bones, the clothes hollow and limp over the skeleton that remained. Finally the irises rolled to the top of his head, and the whites of his eyes went dim. The thing lay still. A great mass of wavy blond hair, a coat, a pair of gleaming boots; and this horror that had been Lestat, and I staring helplessly at it.”

“For a long time, Claudia merely stood there. Blood had soaked the carpet, darkening the woven wreaths of flowers. It gleamed sticky and black on the floorboards. It stained her dress, her white shoes, her cheek. She wiped at it with a crumpled napkin, took a swipe at the impossible stains of the dress, and then she said, ‘Louis, you must help me get him out of here!’

“I said, ‘No!’ I’d turned my back on her, on the corpse at her feet.

“ ‘Are you mad, Louis? It can’t remain here!’ she said to me. ‘And the boys. You must help me! The other one’s dead from the absinthe! Louis!’

“I knew that this was true, necessary; and yet it seemed impossible.

“She had to prod me then, almost lead me every step of the way. We found the kitchen stove still heaped with the bones of the mother and daughter she’d killed — a dangerous blunder, a stupidity. So she scraped them out now into a sack and dragged the sack across the courtyard stones to the carriage. I hitched the horse myself, shushing the groggy coachman, and drove the hearse out of the city, fast in the direction of the Bayou St. Jean, towards the dark swamp that stretched to Lake Pontchartrain. She sat beside me, silent, as we rode on and on until we’d passed the gas-lit gates of the few country houses, and the shell road narrowed and became rutted, the swamp rising on either side of us, a great wall of seemingly impenetrable cypress and vine. I could smell the stench of the muck, hear the rustling of the animals.

“Claudia had wrapped Lestat’s body in a sheet before I would even touch it, and then, to my horror, she had sprinkled it over with the long-stemmed chrysanthemums. So it had a sweet, funereal smell as I lifted it last of all from the carriage. It was almost weightless, as limp as something made of knots and cords, as I put it over my shoulder and moved down into the dark water, the water rising and filling my boots, my feet seeking some path in the ooze beneath, away from where I’d laid the two boys. I went deeper and deeper in with Lestat’s remains, though why, I did not know. And finally, when I could barely see the pale space of the road and the sky which was coming dangerously close to dawn, I let his body slip down out of my arms into the water. I stood there shaken, looking at the amorphous form of the white sheet beneath the slimy surface. The numbness which had protected me since the carriage left the Rue Royale threatened to lift and leave me flayed suddenly, staring, thinking: This is Lestat. This is all of transformation and mystery, dead, gone into eternal darkness. I felt a pull suddenly, as if some force were urging me to go down with him, to descend into the dark water and never come back. It was so distinct and so strong that it made the articulation of voices seem only a murmur by comparison. It spoke without language, saying, ‘You know what you must do. Come down into the darkness. Let it all go away.’

“But at that moment I heard Claudia’s voice. She was calling my name. I turned, and, through the tangled vines, I saw her distant and tiny, like a white flame on the faint luminescent shell road.