Manitou Blood Page 3

  “Tatal—tatal nostru—”

  “What did you say?”

  Frank looked up at the big black nurse, but all she could do was shrug. “Sounded like something to do with his nose,” she said. “Maybe he’s having difficulty breathing.”

  “Tatal nostru,” the young man repeated. His heart rate was jiggling excitedly up and down, while his blood pressure had started to sink like the Titanic. He spluttered, and then he coughed up more blood, and snatched at Frank’s sleeve. “Tatal nostru!”

  Frank turned to the nurse and said, “Epinephrine, and quick.” Then he turned back to the young man. “Listen—can you hear me? Try not to get too stressed. Your whole system’s had a serious shock, and you really need to stay calm.”

  “Tatal nostru—carele este in ceruri—” the young man panted.

  “Don’t try to talk,” Frank told him. “Breathe deeply and evenly, that’s right, and relax.”

  The young man stared at Frank wide-eyed. Bubbles of blood were frothing at the corners of his mouth, and his chest was heaving up and down as if he had been running a marathon. “—sfinteasca-se numele tau—vie imparatia tafaca-se voia ta—”

  “Please, don’t try to talk,” Frank repeated. “You need to keep as quiet and as steady as you can.”

  The nurse came back with a bottle of epinephrine and a hypodermic. Frank lifted up the young man’s blood-crusted arm, wiped it with an antiseptic tissue, found a vein, and injected it.

  “Painea noastra—cea de toate dane-o astazi—”

  Frank waited. One minute passed, then two. At first he thought he might have made a mistake, and that the young man wasn’t suffering from an anaphylactic seizure after all. But gradually the young man’s heart began to beat more steadily, and his blood pressure began to climb, and he stopped panting for air.

  All the same, his lips kept moving, as if he had to finish his recitation, no matter what.

  “—si nu ne duce pre noi in ispita—ci ne scapa de cel rau—”

  After a while, though, he stopped talking and his eyes closed. Frank peeled back his right eyelid with his thumb, and although his pupil was still darting wildly from side to side, he was clearly unconscious. Frank said to the nurse, “I need you to keep a real close watch on him, okay? It’s possible that he may suffer another allergic episode when this wears off.”

  Dean came back, looking harassed. “Sorry to leave you like that, Frank. How’s he doing?”

  “Anaphylaxis. He had a severe allergic reaction to something he’s ingested or something he’s touched.”

  “He’s okay now?”

  “I gave him two milligrams of epinephrine.”

  Dean bent over the young man, frowning. “These symptoms . . . I don’t know. They don’t seem relate to each other in any logical way at all. There’s something weird going on here.”

  “You think? That isn’t the half of it. He was talking in some foreign language.”

  “Really? Which one?”

  “Nothing that I’ve ever heard before. Middle-European maybe, but it wasn’t Russian. I can recognize Russian, and it didn’t have enough zees in it to be Polish.”

  “Well, people say some pretty wacky things when they’re sick.”

  “Not as wacky as this.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The first few words he came out with—they were exactly the same words that the girl upstairs has been hearing in her nightmares.”

  “You’re shitting me.”

  “No . . . she says she has a recurring nightmare in which she’s trapped inside a box, on a ship. She can’t get out, but she can hear this boy’s voice saying ‘tattle nostrew,’ over and over, like he’s really frightened.”

  “ ‘Tattle nostrew’?”

  “Something like that . . . that’s about as close as I can pronounce it.”

  “And this guy said ‘tattle nostrew’ too? Maybe they know each other. It might explain why they’re both suffering from the same condition. Something they’ve eaten, maybe.”

  “I don’t know,” said Frank, looking down at the young man in his blood-soaked T-shirt. “For some reason, I have a very bad feeling about this.”

  He went to the washbasin to wash his hands. Before he squirted out the medical cleanser, though, he lifted his fingers to his nose and sniffed them, and then sniffed them again.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Dean.

  Frank held out his fingertips so that Dean could smell them, too.

  “That so much reminds me of something,” said Dean. “Don’t tell me.”

  “If you don’t know that this is, you haven’t been on vacation for a very long while. It smells like pina colada. It’s sunblock.”

  When Frank went back to room 1566, Susan Fireman seemed to be sleeping, but when he carried a chair over to her bedside she opened her eyes.

  “Dr. Winter . . .” she said, dreamily. “I thought you might be back.”

  “So you have a good idea what I’m going to ask you?”

  She nodded.

  “Okay then . . . subject to further tests, it appears that you’re not suffering from any internal bleeding. No ulcers, no varices. The blood that you were vomiting came from somebody else.” Pause. “In fact, it came from two somebody elses.”

  He waited for a moment, and then, when she didn’t answer, he said, “Do you think you can maybe explain that?”

  “I don’t know why,” she whispered.

  “You don’t know why what?”

  “I don’t know why I did it. It was like . . . I wasn’t even me.”

  Frank said, “You drank all of that blood, didn’t you? It wasn’t yours at all.”

  “I don’t know why. I can’t understand it.”

  “Whose blood was it, Susan? What did you do to them?”

  “It was so confusing . . . I could see myself doing it but it was like I was watching somebody else.”

  “Whose blood was it, Susan?”

  She closed her eyes and didn’t answer. Frank waited for a long moment and then he said, “Susan—I need to know who that blood came from.”

  “Why?” she said, without opening her eyes. “What difference does it make?”

  “It makes a difference because anybody who lost that much blood is most likely dead.”

  “That’s what those people are for, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “That’s what those people are born for . . . to give us their blood.”

  Frank said, “Open your eyes.”

  “Why?”

  “I want you to look at me when you’re talking to me. Or are you scared to?”

  “I’m not scared of anything.”

  “I think you are. I think you’re scared of yourself. I think you’re scared of what you did.”

  “I drank blood, all right? I needed to.”

  “Why did you need to?”

  She suddenly opened her eyes, and exploded in fury. “I was burning! I was burning all over! I was on fire and that was the only way to stop it!”

  “So you had to drink blood, to stop the burning?”

  “You don’t understand! My whole body was on fire! I would have died without it!”

  “So whose blood was it, Susan?”

  “Don’t you get it, I would have died!”

  She stared at him fiercely, but her ferocity didn’t last for very long. He sat back and said nothing, and she began to relax. After a few moments she closed her eyes again and lay on her pillow utterly still, as if she were sleeping, or dead. Frank waited. He was tempted to ask her again whose blood it was, but he had the feeling that she was going to tell him, if he gave her enough time.

  Eventually, she spoke, in a very flat, detached voice. “Look at me,” she said. “I’m opening my bedroom door.”

  She paused for a moment, licking her lips, as if they were dry.

  “Where are you now?” Frank asked her.

  “I’m in the corridor. The sunlight’s falling across the corrid
or this way—” indicating a diagonal slant. “It’s falling right on the poster of Jim Morrison with gardenias in his hair. I can smell coffee . . . and I can hear Prissy in the kitchen singing Man on the Moon. ‘Do you believe . . . they put a man on the moon? Do you believe . . . there’s nothing up their sleeve?’”

  Another pause. After a while, Frank asked, “Now what are you doing?”

  “I’m walking into the kitchen and Prissy turns around to me and smiles. That’s the last time she smiles at me. That’s the very last time. Tatal nostru. Carele esti in ceruri.”

  “What does that mean, Susan?”

  “I feel like I’m burning. There’s so much sunlight. The whole kitchen is filled with sunlight and it burns! It’s like I’ve had acid poured all over me. I’m burning all over, even my feet. Oh God, I’m going to die. I start screaming at Prissy but Prissy doesn’t understand what’s wrong with me. She starts screaming too. We’re both screaming but she’s screaming because she’s frightened while I’m screaming because I’m on fire.”

  Susan’s hand scrabbled sideways, touching Frank’s arm. “I pick up the knife . . . the knife . . . there’s a big knife lying on the counter and I pick it up. I don’t hesitate. I can’t hesitate, I’m on fire. I cut her like this, across her throat. There’s blood spraying everywhere, all over the kitchen. All up the blinds and over the draining board. Blood, blessed blood.

  “Prissy falls to the floor with her arms waving and her legs kicking. I kneel down beside her and I cover her wound with my mouth. I drink and I drink but I scarcely have to swallow because her blood is pumping right down my throat, and it’s warm and delicious and it eases my burning. I drink so much that I almost drown, and Prissy’s blood is running out of my nose.”

  Susan lay quietly for another minute, as if she were reliving the relief that her friend’s blood had given her.

  “Is Prissy dead?” asked Frank.

  Susan nodded. “She looks very pale, doesn’t she? But that was what she was born for. From the day she came out of her mother’s womb, that was her destiny. To feed me, and to stop me from burning alive.”

  “Now what do you do?”

  “I’m standing up . . . my bathrobe, it’s so heavy, it’s warm and it’s soaked in blood. I need to go back to my room and change. But look—the door’s opening—the door’s opening and it’s Michael. He stands there staring at me and he can’t believe what he’s looking at. What’s happened? What’s all this blood? Prissy! What’s happened to Prissy?

  “He doesn’t understand that it’s me, and that I did it. He kneels down beside Prissy and while he’s holding her head I pick up the knife again and—” she didn’t finish her sentence, but mimed the way that she had cut Michael’s throat, right down to the little wrist flick that she had given the knife so that the blood would fly off the tip.

  She clutched the side of her neck. “Michael topples over sideways, on top of Prissy. He’s trying to push me away but he’s too busy trying to stop the blood from spurting out of his neck. Spurt! Spurt! It’s everywhere, all over the floor, all over my face, all over my legs. I pull off my wet bloody bathrobe so that I’m naked, and I’m smearing his blood around and around, all over me.”

  Frank sat and watched as she caressed her breasts and her stomach and her thighs. “Blood, all over me, sticky and warm . . . and it eases my burning so much . . . blood everywhere, blood between my legs, I can massage myself with fresh blood and it feels wonderful . . .”

  She let out a long quiver of satisfaction. Then she said, “I bend over Michael and he’s staring at me. I smile at him and I whisper, ‘thank you, Michael, you’re an angel.’ I press my mouth against that gaping slit in his neck and I swallow his blood, gulp, gulp, gulp, even though I know that I’m being a glutton. Look at me! I’ve got blood pouring out of the sides of my mouth and dripping off my chin.

  “But now I’ve sicked some up. I can’t drink any more. I’m standing up now . . . I’m walking along the corridor leaving bright red footprints. I sick up some more. Splatter, onto the floor. Then I go into the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror. Blood woman! Blood woman! Scarlet face, scarlet arms and legs, scarlet body. But I’m not burning any more. I’m calm now, and my skin feels so much cooler. And I feel so . . . what’s the word? Serene.”

  She opened her eyes, and smiled at him. “That’s what I feel. Serene.”

  Somebody cleared his throat. Frank turned around and saw a tall black man in a black linen suit, waiting in the doorway. There was another man with him, a sallow-skinned white man in a short-sleeved shirt with jazzy red patterns on it and a blood-colored necktie.

  “Dr. Winter? I’m Lieutenant Hayward Roberts and this is Detective Paul Mancini.”

  Frank pushed back his chair and stood up, and almost lost his balance.

  “Are you okay?” Lieutenant Roberts asked him.

  “No,” said Dr. Winter. “I think I need a very stiff drink.”

  3

  BLOOD ROOT

  I looked up from the cards with the most serious frown that I could manage. It was pretty hard to be serious when the sixty-seven-year-old woman sitting opposite me was wearing a bright pink straw hat covered in china cherries and a multilayered pink organza dress that looked as if she were all dressed up for a children’s birthday party. And pink knee-high socks. And two-toned cheerleaders’ shoes, custom-made, also in pink.

  “You have a weekend of very heavy financial losses ahead of you,” I told her. “By Monday, you’re going to be $17,480 poorer, with nothing to show for it.”

  Mrs. Teitelbaum gnawed at her lip. She didn’t say anything, but I could tell by the hunted look in her eyes and the way she was clutching the strap of her purse how anxious she was. Mrs. Teitelbaum’s money was dearer to her heart than her grandchildren. If there was any legal way that she could have married her deposit account at Chemical Bank, she would have done it, and she would have taken it on a honeymoon to Jamaica, too.

  “Tomorrow—let’s see—tomorrow you’re going to drop your purse.”

  “You’re sure? That’s terrible!”

  “Oh, it’s worse than that. Your purse is going to be picked up.”

  “Picked up? Surely that’s good?”

  “Not if the person who picks it up is a manic depressive who uses your credit card to buy 300 challah loaves from Eli Zabar’s.”

  “No!”

  “That’s not all, by a long shot. Friday, your late husband’s portrait is going to fall off the wall and break one of Widdly’s hind legs, which costs you more than $800 in veterinary bills.”

  “I can’t bear it!”

  “It gets worse, believe me. Saturday, a distant relative is going to call and ask you to make bail for a trumped-up charge of insurance fraud—which, out of the goodness of your heart, you do, especially since he offers you his Mercedes as security. Unfortunately, he disappears and you never hear from him again, and it turns out that his Mercedes has already been repossessed.

  “Sunday, while you’re out having lunch with your friend, Moira, Mr. Polanski upstairs leaves the water running in his bathroom. Your apartment is flooded and all of your Persian rugs are ruined. While you’re clearing up the mess, somebody sneaks into your bedroom and steals your best pearls.”

  Mrs. Teitelbaum leaned forward and peered through her gold-rimmed spectacles. “This is what it says in my cards? For real?”

  “There, look,” I told her. “The smiling fool, with armfuls of bread. The man in prison, with his horse-and-carriage being taken away. The rainstorm, with the drowning woman underneath. And the beach-comber, stealing pearls from the oysters. It’s all there, Mrs. Teitelbaum, as clear as the nose on your face.”

  Mrs. Teitelbaum prodded her nose as if it were somehow to blame for what was going to happen to her. “So how do you know seventeen thousand and what’s it, so exact?”

  “Mrs. Teitelbaum, that’s what you pay me for. My psychic numeracy. I count the number of cards and multiply them by the number of ti
mes you’ve come here to ask my advice, plus Mr. Teitelbaum’s age when he passed away, which was seventy-six, and the twelve tribes of Israel, that’s twelve. Then I deduct your age and the last two digits of your cellphone number and that’s the exact figure.”

  “Seventeen thousand and what?”

  “Seventeen thousand four hundred and eighty.”

  “So what can I do?”

  “I don’t think there’s anything you can do. Fate is fate. Destiny is destiny. The cards don’t make the future, they only warn you what to expect.”

  I pushed back my chair and stood up, accidentally stepping on the hem of my dark green robe and tearing the stitches. “At least none of this will come as a shock, will it? I mean, you’ll be well prepared for it.”

  Mrs. Teitelbaum’s cherries rattled. “But, I don’t want to lose all this money! This is the reason why I come to see you, Mr. Erskine! I come here to find out what is going to happen to me, so that it won’t!”

  I went to the window and parted the dusty brown velvet drapes with two fingers. Down below, on Seventeenth Street, a young Hispanic woman was leaning over her stroller, wiping ice cream from her toddler’s mouth. She had masses of black curly hair, and she was wearing a tight yellow top with an embroidered sun on the front of it, from which her enormous breasts seemed desperate to escape by any route possible; and the smallest pair of white cotton shorts. I think God was punishing me for not keeping up my Spanish lessons. I could just imagine her reaction if I went down to the street and tried the only Spanish come-on line that I knew, “Le importa si me siento aqui?”—“Do you mind if I sit here?”

  I came to terms with reality and let the drapes fall back. “There is something you can do, Mrs. Teitelbaum. If you really want to change your weekend, you could try a little something from the Magic Pantry.”

  “The Magic Pantry?”

  “I don’t often recommend that my clients should resort to spells, Mrs. Teitelbaum. I’m not saying that they don’t work. Oh boy—what!—there’s no denying that they work! But they’re not cheap, and they can have unpredictable side effects.”

  “I certainly don’t want to lose seventeen thousand dollars, Mr. Erskine, whatever the side effects.”