The Delicate Dependency: A Novel of the Vampire Life by Michael Talbot Page A

palm,” he explained. “I can smell death in this hospital. I can smell death very close by. If I were to venture a guess I would say that the heavyset man will die within a day or two. The lily and the palm represent death. I always sprinkle a little of this oil when I know that death is very close.”
    I shivered a little at the young man’s ghoulish eccentricity when his penetrating gaze once again caught my eye. “But tell me, Dottore, ” he continued, “why does your pulse beat so rapidly when you look in my face?”
    “It’s nothing,” I dismissed.
    He continued his icy stare, “Well,” I conceded, “it’s just that very long ago, when I was a little boy, I once met a young man who looked very much like you.”
    “How long ago?”
    “Almost forty years.”
    He chuckled slightly. “Well, it couldn’t have been me then, could it?” Without waiting for an answer he threw the bedsheets back and deftly lifted himself up against the headboard. “Would you be kind enough to get me a wheelchair so I can get out of here now?” he said as he struggled to control a grimace of pain.
    “Where are you going?” I asked incredulously.
    “I don’t know,” he returned. “I have no home or friends in London, but it would be completely out of the question for me to stay here tonight.”
    I was a little taken aback. “But you must stay here; in fact, you must stay here for many nights to come. I told you, your legs were very badly broken and you’ll be very lucky ever to—” I stopped myself short.
    “—ever to walk again,” he filled in and laughed a light and airy laugh. And then, with a voice so wrought with self-assurance it frightened me, he said, “I’ll walk again.”
    “Yes,” I returned. “Perhaps you will, but nonetheless it would be completely impossible for you to leave the hospital tonight. You must stay in bed.”
    At this the young man became visibly upset. “ Per piacere ,” he pleaded, “you don’t understand. I cannot stay. You just don’t understand!”
    “I think I do,” I said and he eyed me suspiciously. I held the lamp up to his face and he uttered a little cry as he covered his eyes. “You’re afraid you won’t be able to continue your habit. What was it, cocaine?”
    He glared at me. “If I stay you must make perfectly sure no sunlight comes into this room.”
    “I’ll make sure the blinds are kept drawn—”
    “—not enough!” he snapped.
    “I’ll have the nurses put sheets over the windows. We do that with patients who are acutely sensitive to light.”
    “No!” he shouted and gripped my arm. “Boards!”
    I regarded him sternly. “My good fellow, I think putting boards over the window is a little extreme. I guarantee you, we can keep out all of the sunlight by simply nailing a few bedsheets up.”
    “ Lei non capisce, ” he said as he sank back heavily into the bed. “It is not because of any cocaine habit that I am so against staying here.”
    I looked at him inquisitively. “May I inquire as to what it is then?”
    His expression became deadly serious. “My dear Dottore, if you have ever believed anyone, you must believe me now. I am not safe here. People fear me and if I am forced to stay here very long they will begin to hate me.”
    “What reason do they have to fear you?”
    He shrugged. “Because I am different, I guess.”
    “Come now—” I began, but he only shook his head with solemn resignation.
    “Trust my words, Dottore. Watch and listen very carefully, and you will see for yourself.” With that he ended and drifted off into a troubled silence.
    I was struck by his words. I was still convinced he was using some drug that dilated his eyes and suspected his worries were no more than eccentricity and perhaps momentary confusion from the shock of the accident. Nonetheless, the gravity of his expression moved me, tugged at something deeper than my proper and traditional common sense.
    “Do you have a wife or family I should inform of