The Tale of the Body Thief (24 page)

But another strange visitor appeared, without making the slightest sound that a mortal could hear. It was a great dog, seeming to materialize out of nowhere, which made its way back the alleyway and to the rear yard.

I’d caught its scent as soon as it approached, but I did not see the animal until I came over the roof to the back of the house. I’d expected to hear from it before this time, for surely it would pick up my scent, know instinctively that I wasn’t human, and then begin to sound its natural alarm of growls and barks.

Dogs had done that enough to me over the centuries, though they don’t always. Sometimes I can entrance them and command them. But I feared the instinctive rejection and it always sent a pain through my heart.

This dog had not barked or given any clue that he knew I was there. He was staring intently at the rear door of the house and the butter-yellow squares of light falling from the window of the door onto the deep snow.

I had a good chance to study him in undisturbed silence, and he was, very simply, one of the most handsome dogs I had ever beheld.

He was covered in deep, plush fur, beautifully golden and gray in places, and overlaid with a faint saddle of longer black hairs. His overall shape was that of a wolf, but he was far too big to be a wolf, and there was nothing furtive and sly about him, as is the case with wolves. On the contrary, he was wholly majestic in the way that he sat staring motionless at the door.

On closer inspection, I saw that he most truly resembled a giant German shepherd, with the characteristic black muzzle and alert face.

Indeed, when I drew close to the edge of the roof, and he at last looked up at me, I found myself vaguely thrilled by the fierce intelligence gleaming in his dark almond-shaped eyes.

Still he gave no bark, no growl. There seemed a near-human comprehension in him. But how could that explain his silence? I had done nothing to enthrall him, to lure or befuddle his dog mind. No. No instinctive aversion at all.

I dropped down into the snow in front of him, and he merely continued to look at me, with those uncanny and expressive eyes.
Indeed, so large was he and so calm and sure of himself, that I laughed to myself with delight as I looked at him. I couldn’t resist reaching out to touch the soft fur between his ears.

He cocked his head to one side as he continued to look at me, and I found this very endearing, and then to my further amazement he lifted his immense paw and stroked my coat. His bones were so big and heavy he put me in mind of my mastiffs of long ago. He had their slow heavy grace as he moved. I reached out to embrace him, loving his strength and his heaviness, and he reared back on his hind legs and threw his huge paws up on my shoulders, and ran his great ham-pink tongue over my face.

This produced in me a wonderful happiness, really near to weeping, and then some giddy laughter. I nuzzled him, and held him, and stroked him, loving his clean furry smell, and kissing him all over his black muzzle, and then looking him in the eye.

Ah, this is what Little Red Riding Hood saw, I thought, when she beheld the wolf in her grandmother’s nightcap and gown. It was too funny, really, the extraordinary and keen expression in his dark face.

“Why don’t you know me for what I am?” I asked. And then as he sank back down to a majestic sitting position, and looked up at me almost obediently, it struck me that this was an omen, this dog.

No, “omen” is not the proper word. This did not come from anyone, this gift. It was merely something which put me more in mind of what I meant to do and why I meant to do it, and how little I really cared about the risks involved.

I stood beside the dog, petting him and stroking him and moments passed. It was a small garden, and the snow was falling again, deepening around us, and the cold pain in my skin was growing deeper too. The trees were bare and black in the silent storm. Whatever flowers or grass there might have been was of course not visible; but a few garden statues of darkened concrete and a sharp, thick shrubbery—now nothing but bare twigs and snow—marked a clear rectangular pattern to the whole.

I must have been there with the dog perhaps three minutes before my hand discovered the round silver disk dangling from his chain-link collar, and finally I gathered this up and held it to the light.

Mojo. Ah, I knew this word. Mojo. It had to do with voodoo, gris-gris, charms. Mojo was a good charm, a protective charm. I approved of it as a name for a dog; it was splendid, in fact, and when I
called him Mojo he became faintly excited and once again stroked me slowly with his big eager paw.

“Mojo, is it?” I said again. “That’s very beautiful.” I kissed him and felt the leathery black tip of his nose. There was something else written on the disk, however. It was the address of this house.

Very suddenly the dog stiffened; it moved slowly and gracefully out of the sitting position and into an alert stance. James was coming. I heard his crunching steps in the snow. I heard the sound of his key in the lock of his front door. I sensed him realize suddenly that I was very near.

The dog gave a deep fierce growl and moved slowly closer to the rear door of the house. There came the sound of the boards inside creaking under James’s heavy feet.

The dog gave a deep angry bark. James opened the door, fixed his fierce crazy eyes on me, smiled, and then hurled something heavy at the animal which it easily dodged.

“Glad to see you! But you’re early,” he said.

I didn’t answer him. The dog was growling at him in the same menacing fashion and he gave his attention to the animal again, with great annoyance.

“Get rid of it!” he said, purely furious. “Kill it!”

“You’re talking to me?” I asked coldly. I laid my hand on the animal’s head again, stroking it, and whispering to it to be still. It drew closer to me, rubbing its heavy flank against me and then seated itself beside me.

James was tense and shivering as he watched all this. Suddenly he pushed up his collar against the wind, and folded his arms. The snow was blowing all over him, like white powder, clinging to his brown eyebrows and his hair.

“It belongs to this house, doesn’t it?” I said coldly. “This house which you stole.”

He regarded me with obvious hatred, and then flashed one of those awful evil smiles. I truly wished he’d lapse back into being the English gentleman. It was so much easier for me when he did. It crossed my mind that it was absolutely base to have to deal with him. I wondered if Saul had found the Witch of Endor so distasteful. But the body, ah, the body, how splendid it was.

Even in his resentment, with his eyes fixed upon the dog, he could not wholly disfigure the beauty of the body.

“Well, it seems you’ve stolen the dog too,” I said.

“I’ll get rid of it,” he whispered, looking at it again with fierce contempt. “And you, where do things stand with you? I won’t give you forever to make up your mind. You’ve given me no certain answer. I want an answer now.”

“Go to your bank tomorrow morning,” I said. “I’ll see you after dark. Ah, but there is one more condition.”

“What is it!” he asked between his clenched teeth.

“Feed the animal. Give it some meat.”

Then I made my exit so swiftly he couldn’t see it, and when I glanced back, I could see Mojo gazing up at me, through the snowy darkness, and I smiled to think that the dog had seen my movement, fast as it was. The last sound I heard was James cursing to himself ungracefully as he slammed the back door.

An hour later, I lay in the dark waiting for the sun above, and thinking again of my youth in France, of the dogs lying beside me, of riding out on that last hunt with those two huge mastiffs, picking their way slowly through the deep snow.

And the face of the vampire peering at me from the darkness in Paris, calling me “Wolfkiller” with such reverence, such crazed reverence, before he sank his fangs into my neck.

Mojo, an omen.

So we reach into the raging chaos, and we pluck some small glittering thing, and we cling to it, and tell ourselves it has meaning, and that the world is good, and we are not evil, and we will all go home in the end.

Tomorrow night, I thought, if that bastard has been lying, I shall split open his chest and tear out his beating heart, and feed it to that big beautiful dog.

Whatever happens, I shall keep this dog.

And I did.

And before this story moves any further, let me say something about this dog. He isn’t going to do anything in this book.

He won’t save a drowning baby, or rush into a burning building to rouse the inhabitants from near-fatal sleep. He isn’t possessed by an evil spirit; he isn’t a vampire dog. He’s in this narrative simply because I found him in the snow behind that town house in Georgetown, and I loved him, and from that first moment, he seemed somehow to love me. It was all too true to the blind and merciless laws I believe in—the
laws of nature, as men say; or the laws of the Savage Garden, as I call them myself. Mojo loved my strength; I loved his beauty. And nothing else ever really mattered at all.

I
WANT the details,” I said, “of how you pushed him out of his body, and how you managed to force him into yours.”

Wednesday at last. Not a half hour had passed since the sun had set. I had startled him when I appeared on the back steps.

We were sitting now in the immaculate white kitchen, a room curiously devoid of mystery for such an esoteric meeting. A single bulb in a handsome copper fixture flooded the table between us with a soft rosy illumination, which lent a deceiving coziness to the scene.

The snowfall continued, and beneath the house the furnace gave a low continuous roar. I’d brought the dog in with me, much to the annoyance of the lord of the house, and after some reassurance, the beast lay quietly now like an Egyptian sphinx, looking up at us, front legs stretched straight before him on the waxed floor. Now and then James glanced at him uneasily, and with reason. The dog looked as if he had the devil inside him and the devil knew the whole tale.

James was far more relaxed now than he had been in New Orleans. He was entirely the English gentleman, which set off the tall, youthful body to powerful advantage. He wore a gray sweater, stretched fetchingly tight over his big chest, and a pair of dark pants.

There were silver rings on his fingers. And a cheap watch on his wrist. I hadn’t remembered these items. He was studying me with a little twinkle in his eye, much easier to endure than those horrid glaring smiles. I couldn’t take my eyes off him, off this body which might soon become mine.

I could smell the blood in the body, of course, and this ignited some low smoldering passion in me. The more I looked at him, the more I wondered what it would be like to drink his blood and be done with it here and now. Would he try to escape the body and leave me holding a mere breathing shell?

I looked at his eyes, and thought,
sorcerer
, and a rare and unfamiliar
excitement completely obliterated the common hunger. I’m not sure I believed he could do it, however. I thought that the evening might end in a tasty feast and no more.

I clarified my question for him. “How did you find this body? How did you get the soul to go into yours?”

“I’d been searching for just such a specimen—a man psychologically shocked out of all will and capacity for reason, yet sound of limb and brain. Telepathy is quite an aid in such matters, for only a telepath could have reached the remnants of intelligence still buried within him. I had to convince him on the deepest unconscious level, so to speak, that I had come to be of help, that I knew he was a good person, that I was on his side. And once I’d reached that rudimentary core, it was fairly easy to plunder his memories and manipulate him into obedience.” He gave a little shrug. “The poor chap. His responses were entirely superstitious. I suspect he thought I was his guardian angel at the end.”

“And you lured him out of his body?”

“Yes, by a series of bizarre and rather ornate suggestions, that’s exactly what I did. Again telepathy is a powerful ally. One has to be psychic, really, to manipulate others in such a way. The first time he rose perhaps a foot or two, then slam, back into the flesh he went. More of a reflex than a decision. But I was patient, oh, very patient. And when I finally lured him out for the space of several seconds, that was sufficient for me to pop inside of him, and at once focus my intense energy upon shoving him down into what was left of the old me.”

“How nicely you put it.”

“Well, we are body and soul, you know,” he said with a placid smile. “But why go all through this now? You know how to rise out of your body. This isn’t going to be difficult for
you
.”

“I might surprise you. What happened to him after he was in your body? Did he realize what had taken place?”

“Not at all. You must understand the man was deeply psychologically crippled. And, of course, he was an ignorant fool.”

“And you didn’t give him even a moment’s time, did you? You killed him.”

“Monsieur de Lioncourt, what I did was a mercy to him! How dreadful to have left him in that body, confused as he was! He wasn’t going to recover, you realize, no matter what body he was inhabiting. He’d murdered his entire family. Even the baby in the crib.”

“Were you part of that?”

“What a low opinion you have of me! Not at all. I was watching the hospitals for such a specimen. I knew one would come along. But why these last questions? Didn’t David Talbot tell you there are numerous documented cases of switching in the Talamasca files.”

David had not told me this. But then I could scarcely blame him.

“Did they all involve murder?” I asked.

“No. Some involved bargains such as you and I have struck.”

“I wonder. We are oddly paired, you and I.”

“Yes, but well paired, you must admit. This is a very nice body I have for you,” he said of himself, placing an open hand on his broad chest. “Not as beautiful as yours, of course. But very nice! And exactly what you ought to require. As for your body, what more can I say? I hope you didn’t listen to David Talbot about me. He’s made so many tragic mistakes.”