CHARACTER INTERVIEW BLOGFEST : WHAT THEY CAN SEE THEY CAN KILL

I'm starting another 8 day straight work gauntlet with half of that being on call. Also life is offering me an opportunity to be wiser and stronger than I feel. So I'm entering Sangu's intriguing blogfest a day early.

It is time for the CHARACTER DIALOGUE BLOGFEST hosted by Sangu :
http://sangumandanna.blogspot.com/2010/05/character-interview-blogfest.html

I want you to know I had to drive all the way to the French Quarter to do this. And while reading and writing horror can be fun, living it is quite another thing :

It was twilight. Lean as a hunting wolf, Samuel McCord was walking beside me. His whole body seemed coiled like an overwound clockwork mechanism.

Despite all that, he seemed to glide though the shadows as if they parted for him lest they touch his cursed body. I glanced at the reflection in the store window beside him.

I went a little cold. A tall Apache dressed in buckskins was reflected, not Samuel. His dried-apricot face looked my way. I tried to swallow and couldn't.

There was fresh war paint on the Apache's face. He shook his head in silent reproach. Lightning split the angry skies above me. Did he cause that?

In a voice of distant thunder , Sam said, "Elu's not happy about this, partner."

"Why?"

"We're going into Meilori's."

"Yes, I need to ask some questions of my characters who come to life only inside your jazz club."

"Son, you need to breathe, eat, and sleep. The rest is negotiable."

He suddenly stopped at the corner of the French Quarter street we'd been walking. My mouth went desert dry. I was about to see something I had only written about.

By day, the corner of Royal and St. Peter houses the majestic Royal Cafe. At dusk, the corner mysteriously transforms into Royal and Rue La Mort. And Meilori's stands revealed to the night and its children.

Words. Just words. Sight hollowed out my chest.

My vision blurred. My head became light. Reality stretched as if it were taffy being pulled by an insane demon-child. The world looked as if I were seeing it from the wrong end of a telescope.

Ghost demons murmured hollow promises to my ears. My legs went all weak. I felt as if I were about to topple off the street and fall into madness. Sam took my arm gently.

"The first time's always the worst," he said low.

Meilori's stood towering over me. Torch-lit iron lacework balconies stretched up high into the foggy night. I couldn't make out the building's top.

Leathery wings sounded up high in the thick fog that masked the remaining balconies. I heard the thud of a heavy body, the ear-aching screech of talons against steel, and a husky laugh of hunger about to be fed.

I tore my eyes away before I saw something I'd have nightmares about. I saw the weathered sign hanging above the door : Here Be Monsters. I saw the gleaming window in front of me.

In strange, flowing script was the one word : Meilori's. The letters were rippling into different designs and fonts. My eyes seemed to stretch along with them. I saw, not my reflection, but Elu's. He spoke in words low and grim.

"Inside you will see those of whom you write, Scribbler. But more. They will see you. And what they see they can kill. You may walk in. You may not walk out."

Sam smiled crooked, "Of whom? Elu, you're showing off that education of yours."

"I am trying to show the Scribbler the path to life."

"I mean to keep him safe."

"You have meant to do a lot of things at which you failed."

"Tonight won't be one of them. Roland and I have already talked about this. He'll be safe."

"Let us hope so for the Scribbler's sake."

The scribbler in question was scared spitless so I didn't say a word. Sam took my arm and led me through the swinging wooden doors that reminded me of an Old West's saloon. He saw me glance long at them.

"Yeah, I took these from Hicock's saloon in Deadwood. I thought it might make him feel more at home."

"Will we see him inside?"

Sam smiled sad. "Let's walk in and find out."

We walked in, and I hushed in a breath. It was like something out of a Sherlock Holmes movie or an elite West End bordello. Victorian portraits hung on walls draped in crimson velvet. Chandeliers spun, shimmering down their soft light upon tables with people in clothing from wildly different eras : samurai drank saki with Vikings guzzling mead. Mobsters from the Roaring Twenties played cards with French Musketeers. A toga clad emperor flirted with Marie Antoinette.

How could I tell? The fine stitching all around her slender alabaster throat. And the royal look of scorn she daggered at both me and Sam.

"Come," rasped a voice that had it been a face I would have slapped. "Sit with me."

A tall Nazi in the black uniform of the S.S.

"Major Strasser?," I frowned.

"The very same." He looked past us to the still-swinging doors, then back to Sam. "It is the year 2010 out there?"

"Yes," said Sam softly.

"Then, you know how the war ends?"

"Yes," Sam nodded. "Everybody loses."

A tall woman with skin the color of milk coffee swayed up to us. I tried to keep my face calm. But she was dressed like a buccaneer in a skirt so short it qualified as a wide belt.

She smiled impishly. "Keep those eyes on my legs any longer, and I'll have to charge them rent."

Sam chuckled, "Be nice, Toya. Roland's a guest."

One thin eyebrow arched. "You're that Roland? You knew about this place and still you came?"

"I'm not that brave, Toya."

She led us to a round, gleaming mahogany table where three people were already sitting. "Or that smart either. I'll bring your ice tea in a minute."

"How did you know I was going to order ice tea," I stammered.

A velvet voice spoke in strained tones, "I told her."

I looked down upon a face that could have had pacifists starting wars and saints embezzling orphanages. It looked oddly out of place on a woman in nun's robes. Magda. The gypsy who two thousand years ago had stolen a centurion's nails at a very infamous crucifixtion.

And that meant the priest sitting next to her was Renfield. He was so skinny I could almost smell his bones. And he was so tense I almost expected him to vibrate in place. And I didn't blame him.

Renfield and I both looked at the tall man sitting far from him and Magda. Though no shadows should have been masking his body, they were all around him. It was as if they radiated from him.

"Hello, DayStar," said Sam low. "You weren't invited."

In a hollow voice like the ringing of distant ghost bells in the night, DayStar chuckled, "And since when has that stopped me?"

Gray eyes burned from out of the darkness as they evaluated me. "So you think you know me well enough to portray me, talking monkey?"

I forced my throat to work. "The question is do you know yourself?"

His long right forefinger nail etched a childish drawing of a gallows on the surface of the table. I smelled sulfuric acid. Elu had tried to warn me.

DayStar murmured, "If you're going to answer a question with a question, things will get ugly for you and amusing for me."

Sam stepped slightly in front of me. "He's a guest, DayStar."

"And you will stop me just how?"

"Like this," Sam smiled, and he pinched the hell out of my cheek.

"OW!!"

I sat up straight in bed, rubbing my throbbing face and letting out a long sigh of relief. Sam had been right. It was always safer to visit Meilori's in dreamtime.

Gypsy, my cat, was curled by my pillow. Her green eyes opened, seeming like windows into mysteries humans would never understand. Proving the magic of dreamtime was still in the air, she purred in spoken words.

"I don't know about you. But that scared the piss out of me."

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Hope you were entertained by that as much as I was writing it. Here's something stirring to end it all with :