Lilith’s Dream: A Tale of the Vampire Life (14 page)

Frozen air came out into the thick heat, making clouds arise around her. Beyond the door was a freezing cold cave, with the carcasses of cattle and pigs hung on hooks. So this was the place where the human food was kept. Originally, they had been gatherers of berries and fruits, but her greedy children had bred them to eat meat, so that they would become bigger and juicier, and do it faster.

She could not stay in this cold, so she went out and back down the hallway. Here she noticed a hatch, which she climbed into. A well-lighted stairway wound upward at least fifty feet. She went to the top and through another door. Absolute silence here. She found a room with a table in it and an array of silver knives and hooks and other sharp implements behind glass. Above the table was what she now recognized as an electric light, huge, designed to cast the whole thing into brilliant illumination—to light the table top. Against one wall were iron tanks of some sort. There were dark green gowns hung on hooks, and strange cloth face masks.

Was it perhaps a ritual chamber, where they sacrificed themselves to their imaginary gods?

She had no way to tell when the humans would return here, so she could not stay. She went through a door marked “Morgue” and found there three coffins, each resting in a table with lips around it, designed to keep it from sliding off. She opened one, and then another, and then the third. They had room enough for her, and they were confined enough to be warmed by her own body warmth. She could sleep in one of them, maybe for a long time, maybe even for the two or three days needed for her body to heal itself.

After feeding, you required sleep, but these past few days she’d gotten only snatches. She needed the long, helpless sleep that was the only kind that would truly rejuvenate her. The Sleep, her people called it, the deep, enriching excursion to the edge of death that kept them perpetually young.

The humans would not come here except to put their dead friend in the first of the three coffins. She went to the one at the rear of the room, opened it, and got in. Wrapping her cloak around herself, she pulled the lid closed, leaving a corner of leather out so that there would be some circulation of air. She didn’t need much. In fact, a grave made an excellent hiding place for a sleeping Keeper.

Body warmth began to make her cozy, and for the first time in what seemed like eternity itself, she felt safe and at least a little comfortable. Her tongue was dry and her throat was swollen. She needed water, but the problem would have to keep until later.

She closed her eyes. There was the long ridge she’d climbed once, she was sure, and the tree covered with flowers like long feathers of the palest, most delicate pink. As she went beneath it, the bright, innocent voice of a young man said, “Only an hour,” and she cried, for she had been hearing that promise, it seemed, since before the beginning of time itself. “Where are you?” she whispered into the dark, “Please, where are you?”

Her eyes grew heavy, and sleep came upon her. She dreamed of a little town snuggled in a gap in the flower-tossed ridges, with stone houses and sheaths for roofs. And she was a new bride, and he was there, a shadow among the bright shadows. He said, “The ringer stands by the bell.” In his voice she could hear his smile.

Then another voice spoke, rough and quick. It said, “Allah be praised, there’s already a corpse in here.”

Another said, “That can’t be.”

Light flooded her eyelids. She was disoriented. It felt as if absolutely no time had passed at all. Then she remembered that she’d been sleeping here, and dreaming, and it had been such a good dream, she hated, oh,
hated
coming back from it.

Wallowing up from the formless, timeless sleep of her kind, she first felt her healing and knew that she had slept for hours, and the hours had served her well. Then she opened her eyes into two twisted, glaring human faces.

She fought for composure, but her heart was breaking. “I am sleeping here by the will of God,” she said in her archaic, painfully formal Arabic. She’d been discovered! Now, she would know the terror of destruction.

The older face disappeared. His voice said, “Bridge? This is the coffin room. We have a stowaway. No, in the coffin we were going to use for Emil. She looked dead, but her eyes opened. She’s looking around. Listen to me, with God’s help, send First Officer Tahrir please.” Then he whispered: “With a gun. There is something that is strange.”

She sat up, her eyes flickering toward some direction of escape. There was only the one door, which they were blocking. They manhandled the stinking remains of their fellow crewman into one of the coffins.

As they were completing this, another man came in. He was wearing an open jacket of dark blue and a white, rumpled shirt. In his right hand he carried a black, mean-looking gun.

The man said, “Who are you? Can you speak?”

She thought it better not to.

“Hear, then? Can you hear?” He turned to the others. “Has she said anything?”

“It’s the djin that was in Cairo.”

“What djin?”

“Eating people and leaping over buildings. Up two stories, five stories. It was all over the television.”

“I didn’t see anything about it.”

“You officers, you only watch CNN. It was on Al-Jazeera every day.”

“Al-Jazeera. So it’s an absurdity. But this girl is—look at her. Under all that grime, she cannot be twenty. And certainly she’s not the Monster of Cairo.”

“Then you did see.”

“Of course I saw, you fool. Do you think we live in a mosque because we’re officers? I am an Egyptian just like you.”

“I’m Yemeni.”

“That’s right, Mahmood. Yemeni.” He picked up a black object and held it against his face. “Captain, yes. I am escorting a stowaway from the morgue.” He glanced over at Lilith, who gave him a tiny, hopeful smile. “No, no, you will be surprised,” he said into the object. He looked again at her. “You will be in amazement, Captain.” He replaced the object onto a hook. “Come,” he said, “come out of there now, girl. What is your name, please?” His hand was laid upon the butt of the gun.

She could reach over and take it, but she wasn’t sure how to make it expel the darts. She had never held a gun, but she wanted very much to hold one and examine it, and understand the workings. Not now, though. If she did it now, she would soon have others with more guns coming in while she tried to duplicate the hand movements she’d seen them use on the things. So she said instead, “My name is Lilith.”

“Oh, the djin of the night! You are not Arab, not Egyptian. Are you a Jew, then? Lilith was the demoness of the Jews, yes?”

What was he saying?

“Adam’s first wife, yes? You must be rather old, Lilith. But you look rather young.” He chuckled.

She could not mistake his leer, but she also could not answer him. She didn’t know how.

“Not talking, eh? Well, that’s understandable. But it doesn’t matter. He’s not turning back for a stowaway, not this far out. You’ll make it to New York, all right.” He laughed. “Then they’ll put you in INS lockup. That’s a pretty way to see America.”

Not much of this made sense. This “America” was apparently the Egyptian colony to which the ship was being sailed. But what the “INS” might be, or how a lockup worked—these things were not clear at all.

“Come on, silent beauty, let me introduce you to the man who’s going to spend the rest of the trip fucking your brains out.” He laughed again, higher this time—she thought, with a little madness in it. “Captain’s a blondie, too.”

They went into a small room that hummed. There they stood for some moments. Lilith was aware of the sensation of movement, but could not tell the direction.

“My God, have you been shitting yourself in there? You smell like the sewers of fucking Lagos.”

“I thirst.”

Now they passed down a corridor, and the man threw open a door into a bright room with a large wooden chest in it. On the top of the chest were piled papers and a machine with a panel on it that glowed. A man in white clothing sat behind the chest, using an instrument that was easily recognizable for what it did. He had a stylus, and was writing with it, or scribbling, rather, like a child. There was no ink pot.

“Now you have me a stowaway, Mr. T., how nice. How very nice. Have you informed the company?”

“No, sir, I brought her here first.”

His head came up from his doodling. “Well.” Their eyes met. She saw his pupils dilate. In a low, strained growl, he said, “And here you are…God…”

“I thought it best to inform you first, you see.”

“Abdel, thank you.” He arose from behind the chest, came around it. He drew back her hood, which she had raised to conceal her filthy hair. “My, my, an innocent girl. Are you from home? Or perhaps Sweden?” He turned to his friend. “Does she have any ID?”

“She calls herself Lilith.”

“Ah, the famous demoness. How promising. Are you fancying yourself a demoness, Lilith? Or, look at you—are you maybe the real thing?”

She could not think how to answer him. He was a commoner, and would not know the language of the rulers. Nevertheless, she tried. “I am the Lily of the Valley,” she said in pharaonic Egyptian.

“That’s not Swedish,” the man said with a smile. He waved his hand before him. “Get her a shower, for God’s sake. And something to wear—oh, let me look at that.” He came around the chest and took the hem of her cloak. Then he met the eyes of the other man. “This is very fine,” he said. “Lilith, you must have a family. Am I wrong about your age? Are you a runaway? Because you know that this calfskin, it’s not cheap, this.”

“Why would she be dressed in a cloak? And look at the dress, Captain. Of linen.”

“You’re an interesting specimen, Lilith. Let’s get her cleaned up, Mr. T. You can use my bathroom, Lilith.”

She was directed through a mean little apartment of rooms where there was a bedstead and table and some chairs thickly covered with cloth. They came into a cell of tile and metal. She smelled water here, but could see none. “I thirst,” she repeated in Arabic.

“You know, you speak Arabic like someone out of the
Thousand and One Nights
. Where did you pick up antique talk like that? Your teacher must’ve been an ass, Lilith.”

“How could an ass teach a language?”

“Not well. Look, I’d love to hang around, but I’ve smelled better smells coming from under the tail of an overheated camel. Please avail yourself of the captain’s incredible generosity in allowing a stinking stowaway to use his beautiful bathroom.”

From this garble of words she gathered that water would be brought here. First she would drink, and then allow the servants to bathe her. So far, she had seen only males in this place, but that was of little concern. There would be serving women, of course. The men were all fed, clean, and dressed, so there had to be women somewhere about.

He went out, drawing the door closed behind him. It became dark. She waited, but did not hear him speak or leave the outside room. His breathing was steady. From the shadows under the door, she could surmise that he was standing, listening. But why? What would there be to hear? She had nothing to do except wait.

After some moments, there came a hesitant tap upon the door. It was him. Did he wish to enter? If so, why not simply do the thing? The tapping was repeated. “Are you decent?”

What a strange question. She was the essence of decency, the most decent of all the beings on the earth. This man would not even exist had it not been for her work. She had given eons of service here. Of course she was decent!

He opened the door, then stood looking at her. Then he turned and went away. Soon he returned with the other one, whose pale face was now flushed red. He had the skin of a northern tribe, this one did. He looked her up and down. “Look, hey—do you speak English?” This was the speech of the Englishmen, which she had heard in Cairo two hundred years ago. She recalled little of it. “Parlez-vous français? Sprechen sie Deutsch?” He looked her in the eyes.

She saw that he needed proper nutrients, and was lacking in body water. They had very little pure water, it seemed to her. She hadn’t really tasted any since she left home. Without pure water, the human body could not thrive.

“You know, Mr. T., I think that this is an autistic. Do you know this, autism?”

“They’re withdrawn. The Arabs call them blessed of God.”

“You and your God.”

“Hey, it’s not my deal. I’m an atheist, as you know very well.”

“Well, this is an autistic. She’s run away from some rich family. My guess, Swedes or English or Americans. That cloak was worth—” He kissed his fingers. “Did you see the stitching in that lining? And that silk. Plus the leather. I believe it’s that incredible Moroccan that’s made from the split skin of unborn calves or something. That thing must have cost in the thousands of dollars U.S.” He regarded her again. “So who are you, sweetheart, and how did you come to be aboard the
Seven Stars?
I’m going to squawk the company about her. There’s probably some fat cat looking for her across half the world.”

“A reward?”

“It’s certainly possible. By the time we get to New York, the INS will have her all sorted out, would be my guess.”

“Unless her fat cats want to come get her.”