The tale of the body thief - By Anne Rice Page 0,162

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 in 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 in the name of God was keeping me alive in 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 in 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 him 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