The tale of the body thief - By Anne Rice Page 0,87

are practical matters at hand. The snow’s coming in on you. This mortal body is freezing, for the love of heaven. Now attend to things as you must!

Yet all I did was open my eyes wider, and stare at what seemed to be the snow piling up in little sparkling crystals on the white surface of the table, expecting every moment that this vision would become more distinct, when of course it would not.

That was spilt tea, wasn’t it? And broken glass. Don’t cut yourself on the broken glass, you won’t heal! Mojo moved closer to me, big warm furry flank welcome against my trembling leg. But why did the feeling seem so distant, as if I were wrapped in layers of flannel? Why could I not smell his wondrous clean woolly smell? All right, senses are limited. You should have expected that.

Now, go look in a mirror; see the miracle. Yes, and just close off this entire room.

“Come on, boy,” I said to the dog, and we went out of the kitchen into the dining room—each step I took feeling awkward and slow and lumbering—and with fumbling, very inexact fingers, I closed the door. The wind banged against it, and seeped around the edges of it, but the door held.

I turned around, off balance for a second, then righting myself. Shouldn’t be so hard to get the knack of this, for the love of heaven! I settled back on my feet, and then looked down at them, amazed at how very large they were, and then at my hands, which were quite big too. But not bad-looking, no, not bad-looking. Don’t panic! The watch was uncomfortable, but I needed it. All right, keep the watch. But the rings? Definitely didn’t want them on my fingers. Itching. Wanted to pull them off. Couldn’t! They wouldn’t come. Lord God.

Now, stop. You’re going to go mad because you can’t pull these rings off your fingers. That’s foolish. Just slow down. There’s such a thing as soap, you know. Soap your hands, these big dark freezing-cold hands, and off the rings will come.

I crossed my arms and eased my hands around my sides, appalled at the feeling of the slippery human sweat beneath my shirt, nothing like blood sweat, and then I took a slow deep breath, ignoring the heavy ponderous feeling of my chest, the raw feeling of the very act of inhaling and exhaling, and I forced myself to look at the room.

This was not the time to scream in terror. Now, just look at the room.

It was very dim. One floor lamp burned, in a far corner, and another tiny lamp on the mantel, but it was still terribly dim. It seemed I was under water and the water was murky, maybe even clouded with ink.

This is normal. This is mortal. This is how they see. But how grim it all looked, how partial, having nothing of the open spatial qualities of the rooms through which a vampire moved.

How hideously gloomy, the dark gleaming chairs, the table barely visible, the dull gold light creeping up into the corners, the plaster moldings at the tops of the walls vanishing into shadow, impenetrable shadow, and how frightening the empty blackness of the hall.

Anything could have been hiding in these shadows—a rat, anything. There might have been another human being in that hall. I looked down at Mojo and was amazed again at how very indistinct he looked, how mysterious in a wholly different way. That was it, things lost their contours in this sort of dimness. Impossible really to gauge their full texture or size.

Ah, but there was the mirror above the mantel.

I went to it, frustrated by the heaviness of my limbs and by a sudden fear of stumbling, and a need to look more than once at my feet. I moved the little lamp under the mirror, and then I looked at my face.

Ah, yes. I was behind it now, and how amazingly different it looked. Gone were the tightness, and the awful nervous glitter of the eyes. There was a young man staring at me, and he looked more than a little afraid.

I lifted my hand and felt of the mouth and the eyebrows, of the forehead, which was a little higher than mine, and then of the soft hair. The face was very pleasing, infinitely more pleasing than I had realized, being square and without any heavy lines, and very well proportioned, and with dramatic eyes. But I