The Vampires

John Rechy

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780802193179
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Letteratura generale

The award-winning, New York Times –bestselling author of City of Night delivers a novel of manipulation, sexuality, and the supernatural. On a beautiful private island somewhere in the Caribbean, the rituals of witchcraft and Satanism suddenly take over the lives of a group of people, exposing and shaping their destinies. Richard, a millionaire who is the epitome of male beauty, is the host to a gathering of carefully selected friends for the purpose of a bizarre confrontation—unknown to them. These odd guests arrive from all corners of the globe by helicopter and speedboat and discover that they are strangely bound together by hate or love or an evil fascination. In the guise of a search for truth, the invited guests are by turns victims and victimizers during a ritual ceremony of evil. Utilizing the techniques of film—close-ups, long-shots, and sudden shifts of scene, garish flashes of colors—John Rechy blends the supernatural ingredients, violent sexuality, and depraved rites with the lush beauty of a sea island to create a world whose superficial beauty conceals dark and violent forces close beneath its surface. Praise for John Rechy "Rechy shows great comic and tragic talent. He is truly a gifted novelist." —Christopher Isherwood, author and playwright "His tone rings absolutely true, is absolutely his own, and he has the kind of discipline which allows him a rare and beautiful recklessness. He tells the truth, and tells it with such passion that we are forced to share in the life he conveys. This is a most humbling and liberating achievement." —James Baldwin, novelist, playwright, and activist "His uncompromising honesty as a gay writer has provoked as much fear as admiration... John Rechy doesn't fit into categories. He transcends them. His individual vision is unique, perfect, loving and strong." —Carolyn See, author of Dreaming: Hard Luck and Good Times in America

Part I

1

The two figures were silhouetted against the stark rectangle of sky framed by the wide window. Drapes thrashed savagely in a trapped wind dashing at the room. Rigid as if the blood had frozen it in that position, one figure knelt over the other. The long silver knife was poised ready to plunge again: Now! Swiftly it was thrust into the astonished flesh. Again! Again!—seeking the heart.

For moments, it was difficult to determine the origin of the scream, which had suddenly stifled other sounds of frenzy within the palatial house. A scream welling like a siren struck momentarily mute, only to rise grasping at all sound—did it come from the kneeling figure rocking back and forth over the slaughtered body in a rhythm which was almost sexual, the brutal knife buried in a savage ceremony? Or did it come from the body on the floor—a final severed protest against the silver object raiding it? Perhaps the scream, already fading into a chanted moan shrouding the others, was a fusion from victim and victimizer.

Suddenly the wind released the whirling drapes. Motion stopped. The two silhouettes were still and silent, dark statues.

Like uncaged birds, voices rushed to fill the silence as the others moved swiftly in an enclosing circle about the body drenched in blood:

“Is this the game?”

“No, God, nobody plays games like that!”

“An exorcism!”

“Playing at God!”

“No—Satan!”

“No, no!”

“Your terrible experiment!”

“Exorcised!”

“Is this the game!”

That murder will happen tonight on a secluded island dominated by a huge mansion surrounded by coves and rotundas—an island embraced by water so clear it rejects reflections, revealing sand like pale-yellow sugar.

But that is not what Joja—red hair rumpled, purple eyes groggy—saw when she woke only moments ago. It was the angry sun clawing at her eyes through drawn drapes. She rolled to the other side of the bed to Escape the glare—and bumped into the body of a man, his head turned anonymously away from her, one naked leg curled over the black sheet.

A tattoo. There was an elaborately wrought tattoo on the man’s ankle: A star enclosed in a swirl of curled vines. An inverted star. From times of dabbling at fashionable, not-quite-serious mystic rites, Joja remembered dimly: A sign of violence? . . . Who is he? she wondered—dismissing him quickly as one more in the army of nameless morningbodies.

Disoriented as to where she was, she rose naked from the crumpled bed. Her skin was as flawless as ivory. She staggered cursing across the plush rug (stretching furrily to the edges of the walls in which were exquisitely mosaicked figures in silhouette: gathered as if at an arcane invocation) toward the hostile windows, to pull the treacherous drapes.

Then she saw it on the fleecy rug: thin, delicately blue like a piece of tissue paper. She bent over it. A prophylactic rubber, the lightest color of blue. A design was imprinted faintly on it. A cloverleaf. . . . No. The inverted star again among the viny swirls. A rubber used and slack—but nothing had been emitted into it.

She turned away from it. At the window, shimmering water flung darts at her eyes as she stood by the brocaded drapes. Thick vines with heart-shaped leaves, orange flowers with protruding slim tongues licked hungrily at the window. The naked sun commanded the green trees which rimmed the island like elaborately costumed sentinels. The island. . . .

Richard’s island!

Joja turned eagerly toward the sleeping figure. Now she could see his face. Long ash-blond hair, sideburns a shade darker, thick eyebrows and eyelashes even darker, almost black—a startling contrast. A beautiful youngman. Perhaps twenty-three. Ten years younger than she, came the uninvited judgment. Yes, beautiful. A naked, depraved angel. But, of course, it was not Richard.

As if this would thwart the disturbing thoughts tugging insistently at the quivering edges of her mind, she began to draw the sheltering drapes.

The splashing of water demanded her attention.

Below the window, a pool looped in an extension of the curling sea. As if having been waiting for a signal from her window, a figure emerged quickly from the water and looked up.

Through sun-needled eyes, Joja had the flashing impression that the figure—a boy—was naked. In fascination she stared at him. But the figure dove back into the water, now a floating shadow beneath its surface.

Overhead, an insistent whirring gathered seeking to localize itself. Following the sound into the sky, azure and cloudless, a shield of blue silver, Joja saw a helicopter descending weightlessly on the island. Like a giant thin insect, it landed in a clearing. Swiftly a woman emerged from its belly.

Malissa! Joja knew. The diabolical woman who flaunted her courtship of evil. Unwelcome memories stirred like echoes: “Burn me!” “Yes, darling, do!—she wants you to!” The odor of singed flesh.

Now a man with enormous shoulders followed Malissa. Then a veiled figure in total, black mourning. And someone small—a child?—but was he carrying a cane? Then a man in shiny leather. Behind them all: a plump, older man, in a brown checkered suit.

Malissa—and Albert, still with her!—and this season’s entourage collected as usual from the devil knows where!

What terrible games is Richard planning?

Joja pulled angrily at the drapes.

Why did I come back?

She returned to the bed. The foot with the tattooed star was stark on the black sheet. She heard again the beckoning splashing of water outside. Did she imagine it now? Because it was more like the echo of applause. Applause. (A stage. “Louder, Joja!” Then the recognition: Her life a silent pantomime: “I had to kill her!”)

To stop the pursuit of memories, she reached out to touch the youngman beside her. He did not react. The splashing of water faded, becoming now like the slow flapping of a bird’s wings. Fiercely this time, she rose again. She looked out the window.

At the edge of the pool, the boy, now distinctly in trunks, looked up at her, capturing her eyes for a frozen moment.

Joja retreated quickly from the window.

Now the boy outside looked away and toward the helicopter which had just descended from the sheet of blue onto his father’s island.

Extravagantly shaped, backs like the spread tails of peacocks, grillwork chairs surrounded the pool. White statues stared without eyes at the blue jewel of shimmering water. On the vines, flowers sputtered like varicolored flames.

Facing the sun, Mark’s eyes were shockingly green, rimmed by thick, long eyelashes—eyes astonishingly light in the deeply tanned face. His full lips parted only slightly in the barest ghost of an undefined smile. Dark hair, wet, clung to his forehead and, long, licked lovingly at the back of his neck almost touching his wide shoulders. Mature beyond his fourteen years, his body was perfectly shaped, bronze stomach ridged, legs sturdy, muscular, long—a fact emphasized by the brief black trunks cutting high into his thighs. A boy of unbelievable beauty and dark, cold sensuality.

As lithely as a panther through his jungle, Mark moved along the tangle of paved walks, toward the woman and the others who had descended from the helicopter a distance away. Along the paths, flowers grew like fragments of a shattered rainbow.

“Mark!” Malissa’s hands were extended toward the boy. Her fingers, a fierce blaze of red rings, mimed the beginning of an embrace. But clearly they did not intend to touch the boy, nor did he move more closely toward her.

“Malissa,” he said. The ambiguous smile did not yet fully touch his lips.

Her face resembled a mask, a handsome, stark mask; the skin was tightly stretched over high, dramatic cheekbones. It was a face, therefore, of indefinable age—she could have as easily been forty—or younger—as fifty, sixty, seventy. Her mouth was rendered more brutal by its dark lipstick. She wore a brown hat whose brim swerved in a diagonal “S” shading a side of her face. Even so, and despite blue-smoked bubble sunglasses, her eyes shone intense and cruel. Though she gave the appearance of height—because she was monumentally imposing, exuding the radiance of power—her body was actually small, and slim. Elegantly attired, she wore a tan dress—and rings, rubies, on all her fingers, rings as red as the scarf—red like fresh, young blood—about her neck. And one black coiled ring like an ebony snake.

Demonic powers were attributed to this woman. Her capacity for evil was legendary among occult groups throughout the world; she was reputed to be one of the most evil women in the world: a reputation enhanced by her vaunted proclamation of alliance with “the dark world.” She carried that black reputation haughtily like an uncontested champion.

“Why isn’t your father here to meet me?” she asked Mark.

“He went to the mainland,” Mark said; that was their designation of the island city nearby. He spoke to her as a clear equal.

“Of course. He would be away,” she said.

The others had remained in the background, behind her, like actors awaiting their cues, which were now being given in introduction: but it was, more, as if Malissa were exhibiting a carefully chosen collection, as inanimate as that: objects given names only for the purpose of reference:

“La Duquesa.” Malissa extended a flashing-ringed hand toward the figure in mourning.

Dark black sunglasses stared from behind a black veil. The sheltered eyes seemed pasted on the pale-white face. Now one hand—fingernails lacquered black—drew the veil slightly apart, the other raised the black glasses, also slightly—to gaze at Mark for only an instant. But for that moment the sorrowful, black-painted eyes devoured the spectacle of the incredibly sexual boy. La Duquesa sighed, the veil quickly drawn, the glasses adjusted: a shield.

“Your grace,” Mark acknowledged graciously, knowing la Duquesa was a man.

“Albert— . . .” Impatiently Malissa’s fingers indicated a plump, past middle-aged, unattractive man in a brown checkered suit. He hovered deferentially about the woman, whose eyes avoided him entirely.

Mark knew him—Malissa’s unlikely permanent companion, the only one who lasted from year to year: as she traveled like a high-class vagrant from country to country, collecting a new “entourage” of youngmen replaced each season: a source of constant speculation as to their purpose: Malissa was notorious for her hatred of sex.

The dumpy man smiled eagerly at Mark.

Malissa pulled away even the hint of attention ...