They stood beside the bed, gazing down at me. The light swirled around them, mingled with warmth, these two fragile figures, the gaunt porcelain girl, the bruises gone from her milk-white skin, and the little Arab boy, the Bedouin boy, for I realized now that that is what he truly was. Fearlessly they stared at what must be unspeakable to behold for human eyes.
"You are so shiny!" said Benji. "Does it hurt you?"
"What can we do!" said Sybelle, so muted, as if her very voice might injure me. Her hands covered her lips. The unruly wisps of her full straight pale hair moved in the light, and her arms were blue from the cold outside, and she could not help but shiver. Poor spare being, so delicate. Her nightdress was crumpled, thin white cotton, stitched with flowerets and trimmed with thin sturdy lace, a thing for a virgin. Her eyes brimmed with sympathy.
"Know my soul, my angel," I said. "I'm an evil thing. God wouldn't take me. And the Devil wouldn't either. I went into the sun so they could have my soul. It was a loving thing, without fear of Hellfire or pain. But this Earth, this very Earth has been my purgatorial prison. I don't know how I came to you before. I don't know what power it was that gave me those brief seconds to stand here in your room and come between you and death that was looming like a shadow over you. "
"Oh, no," she whispered fearfully, her eyes glistering in the dim lights of the room. "He would never have killed me. "
"Oh, yes, he would!" I said, and Benjamin said the very same exact words in concert with me.
"He was drunk and he didn't care what he did," said Benji in instant rage, "and his hands were big and clumsy and mean, and he didn't care what he did, and after the last time he hit you, you lay still like the dead in this very bed for two hours without moving! Do you think a Dybbuk kills your own brother for nothing?"
"I think he's telling you the truth, my pretty girl," I said. It was so hard to talk. With each word I had to lift my chest. In crazy desperation, suddenly I wanted a mirror. I tossed and turned on the bed, and went rigid with pain.
The two were thrown into a panic.
"Don't move, Dybbuk, don't!" Benji pleaded. "Sybelle, the silk, all the silk scarves, get them out, wind them around him. "
"No!" I whispered. "Put the cover up over me. If you must see my face, then leave it bare, but cover the rest of me. Or . . . "
"Or what, Dybbuk, tell me?"
"Lift me so that I can see myself and how I look. Stand me before a long mirror. "
They fell silent in perplexity. Sybelle's long yellow hair lay flaxen and flat down over her large breasts. Benji chewed at his little lip.
All the room swam with colors. Behold the blue silk sealed to the plaster of the walls, the heaps of richly embellished pillows all around me, look at the golden fringe, and there beyond, the wobbling baubles of the chandelier, filled with the glistering colors of the spectrum. I fancied I heard the tinkling song of the glass as these baubles touched. It seemed in my feeble deranged mind that I had never seen such simple splendor, that I had forgotten in all my years just how shining and exquisite the world was.
I closed my eyes, taking with me to my heart an image of the room. I breathed in, fighting the scent of their blood, the sweet clean fragrance of the lilies. "Would you let me see those flowers?" I whispered. Were my lips charred? Could they see my fang teeth, and were they yellowed from the fire? I floated on the silks beneath me. I floated and it seemed that I could dream now, safe, truly safe. The lilies were close. I reached up again. I felt the petals against my hand, and the tears came down my face. Were they pure blood? Pray not, but I heard Benji's frank little gasp, and Sybelle making her soft sound to hush him.
"I was a boy of seventeen, I think, when it happened," I said. "It was hundreds of years ago. I was too young, really. My Master, he was a loving one; he didn't believe we were evil things. He thought we could feed off the badlings. If I hadn't been dying, it wouldn't have been done so soon. He wanted me to know things, to be ready. "
I opened my eyes. They were spellbound! They saw again the boy I'd been. I had done it without intention.
"Oh, so handsome," said Benji. "So fine, Dybbuk. "
"Little man," I said with a sigh, feeling the fragile illusion about me crumble to air, "call me by my name from now on; it's not Dybbuk. I think you picked up that one from the Hebrews of Palestine. "
He laughed. He didn't flinch as I faded back into my horrid self.
"Then tell me your name," he said.
I did.
"Armand," said Sybelle. "Tell us, what can we do? If not silk scarves, ointments then, aloe, yes, aloe will heal your burns. "
I laughed but only in a small soft way, meant to be purely kindly.
"My aloe is blood, child. I need an evil man, a man who deserves to die. Now, how will I find him?"
"What will this blood do?" asked Benji. He sat right down beside me, leaning over me as though I were the most fascinating specimen. "You know, Armand, you are black as pitch, you are made out of black leather, you are like those people they fish from the bogs in Europe, all shiny with all of you sealed inside. I could take a lesson in muscles from looking at you. "
"Benji, stop," said Sybelle, struggling with her disapproval and her alarm. "We have to think how to get an evil man. "
"You serious?" he said, looking up and across the bed at her. She stood with her hands clasped as if in prayer. "Sybelle, that's nothing. It's how to get rid of him afterwards that's so hard. " He looked at me. "Do you know what we did with her brother?"
She put her hands over her ears and bowed her head. How many times had I done that very thing myself when it seemed a stream of words and images would utterly destroy me.