I realized I was jammed into the corner, legs crossed, knees beneath my chin, arms locked around my legs, looking up at her.
"I... I am sorry...." I said. "I was afraid ... that I had frightened you. I was ashamed that I had caused you distress. I felt that I'd been unforgivably clumsy."
She stepped towards me, fearlessly. Her scent filled the attic slowly, like the vapor from a pinch of burning incense.
She looked tall and lithesome in the flowered dress, with the lace at her cuffs. Her short black hair covered her head like a little cap with curls against her cheeks. Her eyes were big and dark, and made me think of Roger.
Her gaze was nothing short of spectacular. She could have unnerved a predator with her gaze, the light striking the bones of her cheeks, her mouth quiet and devoid of all emotion.
"I can leave now if you like," I said tremulously. "I can simply get up very slowly and leave without hurting you. I swear it. You must not be alarmed."
"Why you?" she asked.
"I don't understand your question," I said. Was I crying? Was I just shivering and shaking? "What do you mean, why me?"
She came in closer and looked down at me. I could see her very distinctly.
Perhaps she saw a mop of blond hair and the glint of light in my glasses and that I seemed young.
I saw her curling black eyelashes, her small but firm chin, and the way that her shoulders so abruptly sloped beneath her lace and flowered dress that she seemed hardly to have shoulders at all—a long sketch of a girl, a dream lily woman. Her tiny waist beneath the loose fabric of the waistless dress would be nothing in one's arms.
There was something almost chilling about her presence. She seemed neither cold nor wicked, but just as frightening as if she were! Was this sanctity? I wondered if I had ever been in the presence of a true saint. I had my definitions for the word, didn't I?
"Why did you come to tell me?" she asked tenderly.
"Tell you what, dearest?" I asked.
"About Roger. That he's dead." She raised her eyebrows very lightly. "That's why you came, wasn't it? I knew it when I saw you. I knew that Roger was dead. But why did you come?"
She came down on her knees in front of me.
I let out a long groan. So she'd read it from my mind! My big secret. My big decision. Talk to her? Reason with her? Spy on her? Fool her? Counsel her? And my mind had slapped her abruptly with the good news: Hey, honey, Roger's dead!
She came very close to me. Far too close. She shouldn't. In a moment she'd be screaming. She lifted the dead electric torch.
"Don't turn on your flashlight," I said.
"Why don't you want me to? I won't shine it in your face, I promise.
I just want to see you."
"No."
"Look, you don't frighten me, if that's what you're thinking," she said simply, without drama, her thoughts stirring wildly beneath her words, her mind embracing every detail in front of her.
"And why not?"
"Because God wouldn't let something like you hurt me. I know that. You're a devil or an evil spirit. You're a good spirit. I don't know. I can't know. If I make the Sign of the Cross you might vanish. But I don't think so. What I want to know is, why are you so frightened of me? Surely it's not virtue, is it?"
"Wait just a second, back up. You mean you know that I'm not human?"
"Yes. I can see it. I can feel it! I've seen beings like you before. I've seen them in crowds in big cities, just glimpses. I've seen many things. I'm not going to say I feel sorry for you, because that's very stupid, but I'm not afraid of you. You're earthbound, aren't you?"
"Absolutely," I said. "And hoping to stay that way indefinitely.
Look, I didn't mean to shock you with the news. I loved your father."
"You did?"
"Yes. And . . . and he loved you very much. There are things he wanted me to tell you. But above all, he wanted me to look out for you."
"You don't seem capable of that. You're like a frightened elf.
Look at you."
"You're not the one I'm terrified of, Dora!" I said with sudden impatience. "I don't know what's happening! I am earthbound, yes, that's true. And I... and I killed your father. I took his life. I'm the one who did that to him. And he talked to me afterwards. He said, 'Look out for Dora.' He came to me and told me to look out for you. Now there it is. I'm not terrified of you. It's more the situation, never having been in such circumstances, never having faced such questions!"
"I see!" She was stunned. Her whole white face glistened as if she'd broken into a sweat. Her heart was racing. She bowed her head. Her mind was unreadable. Absolutely unreadable to me. But she was full of sorrow, anyone could see that, and the tears were sliding down her cheeks now. This was unbearable.
"Oh, God, I might as well be in Hell," I muttered. "I shouldn't have killed him. I ... I did it for the simplest reasons. He was just... he crossed my path. It was a hideous mistake. But he came to me afterwards. Dora, we spent hours talking together, his ghost and me. He told me all about you and the relics and Wynken."
"Wynken?" She looked at me.
"Yes, Wynken de Wilde, you know, the twelve books. Look, Dora, if I touch your hand just to try to comfort you, perhaps it will work. But I don't want you to scream."
"Why did you kill my father?" she asked. It meant more than that.
She was asking, Why did someone who talks the way you do, do such a thing?
"I wanted his blood. I feed on the blood of others. That's how I stay youthful and alive. Believe in angels? Then believe in vampires. Believe in me. There are worse things on earth."
She was appropriately stunned.
"Nosferatu," I said gently. "Verdilak. Vampire. Lamia.
Earthbound." I shrugged, shook my head. I felt utterly helpless. "There are other species of things. But Roger, Roger came with his soul as a ghost to talk to me afterwards, about you."
She started to shake and to cry. But this wasn't madness. Her eyes went small with tears and her face crumpled with sadness.
"Dora, I won't hurt you for anything under God, I swear it. I won't hurt you...."
"My father's really dead, isn't he?" she asked, and suddenly she broke down completely, her face in her hands, her little shoulders trembling with sobs. "My God, God help me!" she whispered.
"Roger," she cried. "Roger!"
And she did make the Sign of the Cross, and she sat there, sobbing and unafraid.
I waited. Her tears and sorrow fed upon themselves. She was becoming more and more miserable. She leant forward and collapsed on the boards. Again, she had no fear of me. It was as if I weren't there.
Very slowly I slipped out of the corner. It was possible to stand up easily in this attic, once you were out of the corner. I moved around her, and then very gently reached to take her by the shoulders.
She gave no resistance; she was sobbing, and her head rolled as if she were drunk with sorrow; her hands moved but only to rise and grasp for things that weren't there. "God, God, God," she cried.
"God ... Roger!"
I picked her up. She was as light as I had suspected, but nothing like that could matter anyway to one as strong as me. I took her out of the attic. She fell against my chest.
"I knew it, I knew when he kissed me," she said through her sobbing, "I knew I would never lay eyes on him again. I knew it. . . ."
This was hardly intelligible. She was so crushably small, I had to be most careful, and when her head fell back, her face was blanched and so helpless as to make a devil weep.
I went down to the door of her room. She lay against me, still like a rag doll tossed into my arms, that without resistance. There was warmth coming from her room. I pushed open the door.
Having once been a classroom perhaps, or even a dormitory, the room was very large, set in the very corner of the building, with lofty windows on two sides and full of the brighter light from the street.
The passing traffic illuminated it.
I saw her bed against the far wall, an old iron bed, rather plain, perhaps once a convent bed, narrow like that, with the high rectangular frame intact for the mosquito netting, though none hung from it now. White paint flaked from the thin iron rods. I saw her bookcases everywhere, stacks of books, books open with markers, propped on makeshift lecterns, and her own relics, hundreds of them perhaps, pictures, and statues, and maybe things Roger had given her before she knew the truth. Words were written in cursive on the wooden frames of doors and windows in black ink.