"Ah, I caught that," he said with a little lift of the eyebrows. "I catch entirely too much. Now. Listen to what I say. You must fix it in your mind that your thoughts remain within you, that you are not attempting to communicate with others-not through facial expression or body language of any sort; that indeed you are impenetrable. Make an image of your sealed mind if you must. Ah, that's good. You've gone blank behind your handsome young face. Even your eyes have changed ever so slightly. Perfect. Now I'm going to try to read you. Keep it up."
By the end of forty-five minutes, I had learned the trick fairly painlessly, but I could pick up nothing of David's thoughts even when he tried his hardest to project them to me. In this body, I simply did not have the psychic ability which he possessed. But the veiling we had achieved, and this was a crucial step. We would continue to work on all this throughout the night.
"We're ready to begin on the out-of-body travel," he said.
"This is going to be hell," I said. "I don't think I can get out of this body. As you can see,
I just don't have your gifts."
"Nonsense," he said. He loosened his posture slightly, crossing his ankles and sliding down a bit in the chair. But somehow, no matter what he did, he never lost the attitude of the teacher, the authority, the priest. It was implicit in his small, direct gestures and above all in his voice.
"Lie down on that bed, and close your eyes. And listen to every word I say."
I did as I was told. And immediately felt a little sleepy. His voice became even more directive in its softness, rather like that of a hypnotist, bidding me to relax completely, and to visualize a spiritual double of this form.
"Must I visualize myself with this body?"
"No. Doesn't matter. What matters is that you-your mind, your soul, your sense of self- are linked to the form you envision. Now picture it as congruent with your body, and then imagine that you want to lift it up and out of the body-that you want to go up!"
For some thirty minutes David continued this unhurried instruction, reiterating in his own fashion the lessons which priests had taught to their initiates for thousands of years. I knew the old formula. But I also knew complete mortal vulnerability, and a crushing sense of my limitations, and a stiffening and debilitating fear.
We had been at it perhaps forty-five minutes when I finally sank into the requisite and lovely vibratory state on the very cusp of sleep. My body seemed in fact to have become this delicious vibratory feeling, and nothing more! And just when I realized this, and might have remarked upon it, I suddenly felt myself break loose and begin to rise.
I opened my eyes; or at least I thought I did. I saw I was floating directly above my body; in fact, I couldn't even see the real flesh-and-blood body at all. "Go up!" I said. And instantly I traveled to the ceiling with the exquisite lightness and speed of a helium balloon! It was nothing to turn completely over and look straight down into the room.
Why, I had passed through the blades of the ceiling fan! Indeed, it was in the very middle of my body, though I could feel nothing. And down there, under me, was the sleeping mortal form I had inhabited so miserably all of these strange days. Its eyes were closed, and so was its mouth.
I saw David sitting hi his wicker chair, right ankle on his left knee, hands relaxed on his thighs, as he looked at the sleeping man. Did he know I had succeeded? I couldn't hear a word he was speaking. Indeed, I seemed to be in a totally different sphere from these two solid figures, though I felt utterly complete and entire and real myself.
Oh, how lovely this was! This was so near to my freedom as a vampire that I almost began to weep again. I felt so sorry for the two solid and lonely beings down there. I wanted to pass up through the ceiling and into the night.
Slowly I went up, and then out over the roof of the hotel, until I was hovering above the white sand.
But this was enough, wasn't it? Fear gripped me, the fear I'd known when I did this little trick before. What hi the name of God was keeping me alive hi this state! I needed my body! At once I plummeted, blindly, back into the flesh. I woke up, tingling all over, and staring at David as he sat staring back at me.
"I did it," I said. I was shocked to feel these tubes of skin and bone enclosing me again, and to see my fingers moving when I told them to do it, to feel my toes come alive hi my shoes. Lord God, what an experience! And so many, many mortals had sought to describe it. And so many more, in their ignorance, did not believe that such a thing could be.
"Remember to veil your thoughts," David said suddenly. "No matter how exhilarated you become. Lock your mind up tight!"
"Yes, sir."
"Now let's do it all again."
By midnight-some two hours later-I had learned to rise at will. Indeed, it was becoming addictive-the feeling of lightness, the great swooshing ascent! The lovely ease of passing through walls and ceiling; and then the sudden and shocking return. There was a deep throbbing pleasure to it, pure and shining, like an eroticism of the mind.
"Why can't a man die in this fashion, David? I mean why can't one simply rise into the heavens and leave the earth?"
"Did you see an open doorway, Lestat?" he asked.
"No," I said sadly. "I saw this world. It was so clear, so beautiful. But it was this world." "Come now, you must learn to make the assault."
"But I thought you would do it, David. You'd jolt him and knock nun out of his body and–“
"Yes, and suppose he spots me before I can do it, and makes me into a nice little torch. What then? No, you must learn the trick as well."
This was far more difficult. Indeed it required the very opposite of the passivity and relaxation which we had employed and developed before. I had now to focus all my energy upon David with the avowed purpose of knocking him out of his body-a phenomenon which I could not hope to see in any real sense- and then go into his body myself. The concentration demanded of me was excruciating. The timing was critical. And the repeated efforts produced an intense and exhausting nervousness rather like that of a right-handed person trying to write perfectly with the left hand.
I was near to tears of rage and frustration more than once. But David was absolutely adamant that we must continue and that this could be done. No, a stiff drink of Scotch wouldn't help. No, we couldn't eat until later. No, we couldn't break for a walk on the beach or a late swim.
The first time I succeeded, I was absolutely aghast. I went speeding towards David, and felt the impact in the same purely mental fashion in which I felt the freedom of the flight. Then I was inside David, and for one split second saw myself-slack-jawed and staring dully-through the dun lenses of David's eyes.
Then I felt a dark shuddering disorientation, and an invisible blow as if someone had placed a huge hand on my chest. I realized that he had returned and pushed me out. I was hovering in the air, and then back in my own sweat-drenched body, laughing near hysterically from mad excitement and sheer fatigue.
"That's all we need," he said. "Now I know we can pull this off. Come, once again! We're going to do it twenty times if we have to, until we know that we can achieve it without fail."
On the fifth successful assault, I remained in his body for a full thirty seconds, absolutely mesmerized by the different feelings attendant to it-the lighter limbs, the poorer vision, and the peculiar sound of my voice coming out of his throat. I looked down and saw his hands-thin, corded with blood vessels, and touched on the backs of the fingers with dark hair-and they were my hands! How hard it was to control them. Why, one of them had a pronounced tremour which I had never noticed before.
Then came the jolt again, and I was flying upwards, and then the plummet, back into the twenty-six-year-old body once more.