Merrick (The Vampire Chronicles 7)

In fact, I could have sworn by all I knew of spirits and humans that the dried little body in the bed was empty of its soul. Maybe she'd been dreaming of death and wanted it so badly she'd left her mortal coil for but a few moments.

But when little Merrick stood in the doorway, Great Nananne came back, opening her small crinkled and yellow eyes. Her ancient skin had a beautiful gold color to it, faded though she must have been. Her nose was small and flat, and her mouth fixed in a smile. Her hair was wisps of gray.

Electric lamps, quite shabby and makeshift, were the only illumination save for a wealth of candles on an immense nearby shrine. I could not quite make out the shrine, as it seemed shrouded in dimness, being against the papered shut windows of the front of the house. And the people drew my attention at first.

Aaron brought up an old canebacked chair, to sit beside the woman in the bed.

The bed reeked of sickness and urine.

I saw that newspapers and large brilliantly colored Holy Pictures papered all of the decaying walls. Not a bit of plaster was left bare save for the ceiling, which was full of cracks and chipped paint and seemed a threat to us all. Only the side windows had their curtains, but much glass was broken out and here and there newspaper patches had been applied. Beyond loomed the eternal foliage.

"We'll bring nurses for you, Great Nananne," said Aaron, in a kindly and sincere voice. "Forgive me that it took me so long to come. " He leant forward. "You must trust in me implicitly. We'll send for the nurses as soon as we leave you this afternoon. "

"Come?" asked the old woman sunk down into the feather pillow. "Did I ever ask you¡ªeither of you¡ªto come?" She had no French accent. Her voice was shockingly ageless, low in pitch and strong. "Merrick, sit by me here for a little while, ch¨¦rie," she said. "Be still, Mr. Lightner. Nobody asked you to come. "

Her arm rose and fell like a branch on the breeze, so lifeless in shape and color, fingers curled as they scratched at Merrick's dress.

"See what Mr. Lightner bought for me, Great Nananne?" said Merrick beside her, gesturing with open arms as she looked down on her new clothes.

I had not noticed before that she was in Sunday Best, with a dress of white pique and black patent leather shoes. The little white socks looked incongruous on such a developed young woman, but then Aaron saw her completely as an innocent child.

Merrick leant over and kissed the old woman's small head. "Don't you be afraid of anything on my account any longer," she said. "I'm home now with them, Great Nananne. "

At that point, a priest came into the room, a tall sagging man as old as Nananne was, it seemed to me, slow moving and scrawny in his long black cassock, the thick leather belt drooping over shrunken bones, rosary beads knocking softly against his thigh.

He seemed blind to our presence, only nodding at the old woman, and he slipped away without a word. As to what his feelings might have been about the shrine to the left of us, against the front wall of the house, I couldn't guess.

I felt an instinctive wariness, and an apprehension that he might try to prevent us¡ªwith good reason¡ªfrom taking the child Merrick away.

One never knew which priest might have heard of the Talamasca, which priest might have feared it or despised it, under the guidance of Rome. To those within the hierarchy of the Church, we were alien and mysterious. We were maverick and controversial. Claiming to be secular, yet ancient, we could never hope for the cooperation or the understanding of the Church of Rome.

It was after this man disappeared, and as Aaron continued his polite and subdued conversation with t

he old woman, that I had a chance to view the shrine in full.

It was built up of bricks, from the floor, in stair steps to a high wide altar where perhaps special offerings were placed. Huge plaster saints crowded the top of it in long rows to the left and right.

At once I saw St. Peter, the Papa Legba of Haitian Voodoo, and a saint on a horse who appeared to be St. Barbara, standing in for Chango of Xango in Candomble, for whom we had always used St. George. The Virgin Mary was there in the form of Our Lady of Carmel, standing in for Ezilie, a goddess of Voodoo, with heaps of flowers at her feet and perhaps the most candles before her, all of them aflicker in their deep glasses as a breeze stirred the room.

There stood St. Martin de Porres, the black saint of South America, with his broom in hand, and beside him, St. Patrick stood gazing down, his feet surrounded by fleeing snakes. All had their place in the underground religions which the slaves of the Americas had nourished for so long.

There were all kinds of obscure little mementos on the altar before these statues, and the steps below were covered with various objects, along with plates of birdseed, grain, and old cooked food which had begun to rot and to smell.

The more I studied the entire spectacle, the more I saw things, such as the awesome figure of the Black Madonna with the white Infant Jesus in her arms. There were many little sacks tied shut and kept there, and several expensivelooking cigars still in their wrapping, perhaps held for some future offering, I couldn't know for sure. At one end of the altar stood several bottles of rum.

It was certainly one of the largest such altars I'd ever seen, and it did not surprise me that the ants had overrun some of the old food. It was a frightening and disturbing sight, infinitely more than Merrick's recent little makeshift offering in the hotel. Even my Candomble experiences in Brazil did not make me immune to the solemn and savage spectacle of it. On the contrary, I think these experiences in every regard make me more afraid.

Perhaps without realizing I was doing it, I came deeper into the room, close to the altar, so that the woman and her sickbed were out of my sight, behind my back.

Suddenly the voice of the woman in the bed startled me out of my studies.

I turned to see that she had sat up, which seemed almost impossible due to her frailty, and that Merrick had adjusted her pillows so that she might rest in this position as she spoke.

"Candomble priest," she said to me, "sacred to Oxal¨¢. " There it was, the very mention of my god.

I was too astonished to respond.

"I didn't see you in my dream, English man," she went on. "You've been in the jungles, you've hunted treasure. "