Blackwood Farm Part 1

Blackwood Farm.

by Anne Rice

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In her new novel, Anne Rice fuses her two uniquely seductive strains of narrative --her vampire legend and her lore of the Mayfair witches --to give us a world of cla.s.sic Deep South luxury and ancestral secrets.

Welcome to Blackwood Farm: soaring white columns, s.p.a.cious drawing rooms, sun-drenched gardens, and a dark strip of the dense Sugar Devil Swamp. This is the world of Quinn Blackwood, a brilliant young man haunted since birth by a mysterious doppelganger, a spirit known as Goblin, a spirit from a dreamworld that Quinn can't escape and that prevents him from belonging anywhere. When Quinn is made a vampire, losing all that is rightfully his and gaining an unwanted immortality, his doppelganger becomes even more vampiric and terrifying than Quinn himself.

As the novel moves backward and forward in time, from Quinn's boyhood on Blackwood Farm to present-day New Orleans, from ancient Pompeii to nineteenth-century Naples, Quinn seeks out the legendary Vampire Lestat in the hope of freeing himself from the specter that draws him inexorably back to Sugar Devil Swamp and the explosive secrets it holds.

Like her much-loved novel The Witching Hour The Witching Hour, Blackwood Farm Blackwood Farm is a family saga --capturing both the dramas and the subtleties of family as it tells its story of youth and promise, of loss and the search for love, of secrets and destiny. It is Anne Rice at her best. is a family saga --capturing both the dramas and the subtleties of family as it tells its story of youth and promise, of loss and the search for love, of secrets and destiny. It is Anne Rice at her best.

Dedicated to my son, Christopher Rice My days have pa.s.sed away, my thoughts are dissipated, tormenting my heart. They have turned night into day, and after darkness I hope for light again. They have turned night into day, and after darkness I hope for light again. If I wait h.e.l.l is my house, and I have made my bed in darkness. If I wait h.e.l.l is my house, and I have made my bed in darkness. I have said to rottenness: thou art my father; to worms, my mother and my sister. I have said to rottenness: thou art my father; to worms, my mother and my sister. Where is now then my expectation, and who considereth my patience? Where is now then my expectation, and who considereth my patience?

All that I have shall go down into the deepest pit: thinkest thou that there at least I shall have rest?

JOB.

17:11-16.

DV.

1.

Lestat, If you find this letter in your house in the Rue Royale, and I do sincerely think you will find it --you'll know at once that I've broken your rules.

I know that New Orleans is off limits to Blood Hunters, and that any found there will be destroyed by you. And unlike many a rogue invader whom you have already dispatched, I understand your reasons. You don't want us to be seen by members of the Talamasca. You don't want a war with the venerable Order of Psy chic Detectives, both for their sake and ours.

But please, I beg you, before you come in search of me, read what I have to say.

My name is Quinn. I'm twenty-two years old, and have been a Blood Hunter, as my Maker called it, for slightly less than a year. I'm an orphan now, as I see it, and it is to you that I turn for help.

But before I make my case, please understand that I know the Talamasca, that I knew them before the Dark Blood was ever given to me, and I know of their inherent goodness and their legendary neutrality as regards things supernatural, and I will have taken great pains to elude them in placing this letter in your flat.

That you keep a telepathic watch over New Orleans is plain to me. That you'll find the letter I have no doubt.

If you do come to bring a swift justice to me for my disobedience, a.s.sure me please that you will do your utmost to destroy a spirit which has been my companion since I was a child. This creature, a duplicate of me who has grown with me since before I can remember, now poses a danger to humans as well as to myself.

Let me explain.

As a little boy I named this spirit Goblin, and that was well before anyone had told me nursery rhymes or fairy tales in which such a word might appear. Whether the name came from the spirit himself I don't know. However, at the mere mention of the name, I could always call him to me. Many a time he came of his own accord and wouldn't be banished. At others, he was the only friend I had. Over the years, he has been my constant familiar, maturing as I matured and becoming ever more skilled at making known to me his wishes. You could say I strengthened and shaped Goblin, unwittingly creating the monster that he is now.

The truth is, I can't imagine existence without Goblin. But I have to imagine it. I have to put an end to Goblin before he metamorphoses into something utterly beyond my control.

Why do I call him a monster --this creature who was once my only playmate? The answer is simple. In the months since my being made a Blood Hunter --and understand, I had no choice whatsoever in the matter --Goblin has acquired his own taste for blood. After every feeding, I am embraced by him, and blood is drawn from me into him by a thousand infinitesimal wounds, strengthening the image of him, and lending to his presence a soft fragrance which Goblin never had before. With each pa.s.sing month, Goblin becomes stronger, and his a.s.saults on me more prolonged.

I can no longer fight him off.

It won't surprise you, I don't think, that these a.s.saults are vaguely pleasurable, not as pleasurable to me as feeding on a human victim, but they involve a vague o.r.g.a.s.mic s.h.i.+mmer that I can't deny.

But it is not my vulnerability to Goblin that worries me now. It is the question of what Goblin may become.

Now, I have read your Vampire Chronicles through and through. They were bequeathed to me by my Maker, an ancient Blood Hunter who gave me, according to his own version of things, an enormous amount of strength as well.

2.In your stories you talk of the origins of the vampires, quoting an ancient Egyptian Elder Blood Drinker who told the tale to the wise one, Marius, who centuries ago pa.s.sed it on to you.

Whether you and Marius made up some of what was written in your books I don't know. You and your comrades, the Coven of the Articulate, as you are now called, may well have a penchant for telling lies.

But I don't think so. I'm living proof that Blood Drinkers exist --whether they are called Blood Drinkers, vampires, Children of the Night or Children of the Millennia --and the manner in which I was made conforms to what you describe.

Indeed, though my Maker called us Blood Hunters rather than vampires, he used words which have appeared in your tales. The Cloud Gift he gave to me so that I can travel effortlessly by air; and also the Mind Gift to seek out telepathically the sins of my victims; as well as the Fire Gift to ignite the fire in the iron stove here that keeps me warm.

So I believe your stories. I believe in you.

I believe you when you say that Akasha, the first of the vampires, was created when an evil spirit invaded every fiber of her being, a spirit which had, before attacking her, acquired a taste for human blood.

I believe you when you say that this spirit, named Amel by the two witches who could see him and hear him --Maharet and Mekare --exists now in all of us, his mysterious body, if we may call it that, having grown like a rampant vine to blossom in every Blood Hunter who is made by another, right on up to the present time.

I know as well from your stories that when the witches Mekare and Maharet were made Blood Hunters, they lost the ability to see and talk to spirits. And indeed my Maker told me that I would lose mine.

But I a.s.sure you, I have not lost my powers as a seer of spirits. I am still their magnet. And it is perhaps this ability in me, this receptiveness, and my early refusal to spurn Goblin, that have given him the strength to be plaguing me for vampiric blood now.

Lestat, if this creature grows ever more strong, and it seems there is nothing I can do to stop him, is it possible that he can enter a human being, as Amel did in ancient times? Is it possible that yet another species of the vampiric root may be created, and from that root yet another vine?

I cannot imagine your being indifferent to this question, or to the possibility that Goblin will become a killer of humans, though he is far from that strength right now.

I think you will understand when I say that I'm frightened for those whom I love and cherish --my mortal family --as well as for any stranger whom Goblin might eventually attack.

It's hard to write these words. For all my life I have loved Goblin and scorned anyone who denigrated him as an "imaginary playmate" or a "foolish obsession." But he and I, for so long mysterious bedfellows, are now enemies, and I dread his attacks because I feel his increasing strength.

Goblin withdraws from me utterly when I am not hunting, only to reappear when the fresh blood is in my veins. We have no spiritual intercourse now, Goblin and I. He seems afire with jealousy that I've become a Blood Hunter. It's as though his childish mind has been wiped clean of all it once learned.

It is an agony for me, all of this.

But let me repeat: it is not on my account that I write to you. It is in fear of what Goblin may become.

Of course I want to lay eyes upon you. I want to talk to you. I want to be received, if such a thing is possible, into the Coven of the Articulate. I want you, the great breaker of rules, to forgive me that I have broken yours.

I want you who were kidnapped and made a vampire against your will to look kindly on me because the same thing happened to me.

3.I want you to forgive my trespa.s.s into your old flat in the Rue Royale, where I hope to hide this letter. I want you to know as well that I haven't hunted in New Orleans and never will.

And speaking of hunting, I too have been taught to hunt the Evil Doer, and though my record isn't perfect, I'm learning with each feast. I've also mastered the Little Drink, as you so elegantly call it, and I'm a visitor to noisy mortal parties who is never noticed as he feeds from one after another in quick and deft moves.

But in the main, my existence is lonely and bitter. If it weren't for my mortal family, it would be unendurable. As for my Maker, I shun him and his cohorts, and with reason.

That's a story I'd like to tell you. In fact, there are many stories I want to tell you. I pray that my stories might keep you from destroying me. You know, we could play a game. We meet and I start talking, and slap d.a.m.n, you kill me when I take a verbal turn you don't like.

But seriously, Goblin is my concern.

Let me add before I close that during this last year of being a fledgling Blood Hunter, of reading your Chronicles and trying to learn from them, I have often been tempted to go to the Talamasca Motherhouse at Oak Haven, outside of New Orleans. I have often been tempted to ask the Talamasca for counsel and help.

When I was a boy --and I'm hardly more than that now --there was a member of the Talamasca who was able to see Goblin as clearly as I could --a gentle, nonjudgmental Englishman named Stirling Oliver, who advised me about my powers and how they could become too strong for me to control. I grew to love Stirling within a very short time.

I also fell deeply in love with a young girl who was in the company of Stirling when I met him, a red-haired beauty with considerable paranormal power who could also see Goblin --one to whom the Talamasca had opened its generous heart.

That young girl is beyond my reach now. Her name is Mayfair, a name that is not unfamiliar to you, though this young girl probably knows nothing of your friend and companion Merrick Mayfair, even to this day.

But she is most certainly from the same family of powerful psychics --they seem to delight in calling themselves witches --and I have sworn never to see her again. With her considerable powers she would realize at once that something catastrophic has happened to me. And I cannot let my evil touch her in any way.

When I read your Chronicles, I was mildly astonished to discover that the Talamasca had turned against the Blood Hunters. My Maker had told me this, but I didn't believe it until I read it in your books.

It's still hard for me to imagine that these gentle people have broken one thousand years of neutrality in a warning against all of our kind. They seemed so proud of their benevolent history, so psychologically dependent upon a secular and kindly definition of themselves.

Obviously, I can't go to the Talamasca now. They might become my sworn enemies if I do that. They are my sworn enemies! And on account of my past contact, they know exactly where I live. But more significantly, I can't seek their help because you don't want it.

You and the other members of the Coven of the Articulate do not want one of us to fall into the hands of an order of scholars who are only too eager to study us at close range.

As for my red-haired Mayfair love, let me repeat that I wouldn't dream of approaching her, though I've sometimes wondered if her extraordinary powers couldn't help me to somehow put an end to Goblin for all time. But this could not be done without my frightening her and confusing her, and I won't interrupt her human destiny as mine was interrupted for me. I feel even more cut off from her than I did in the past.

And so, except for my mortal connections, I'm alone.

I don't expect your pity on account of this. But maybe your understanding will prevent you from 4.immediately annihilating me and Goblin without so much as a warning.

That you can find both of us I have no doubt. If even half the Chronicles are true, it's plain that your Mind Gift is without measure. Nevertheless, let me tell you where I am.

My true home is the wooden Hermitage on Sugar Devil Island, deep in Sugar Devil Swamp, in northeastern Louisiana, not far from the Mississippi border. Sugar Devil Swamp is fed by the West Ruby River, which branches off from the Ruby at Rubyville.

Acres of this deep cypress swamp have belonged to my family for generations, and no mortal ever accidentally finds his way in here to Sugar Devil Island, I'm certain of it, though my great-greatgreat-grandfather Manfred Blackwood did build the house in which I sit, writing to you now.

Our ancestral home is Blackwood Manor, an august if not overblown house in the grandest Greek Revival style, replete with enormous and dizzying Corinthian columns, an immense structure on high ground.

For all its huffing and puffing beauty, it lacks the grace and dignity of New Orleans homes, being a truly pretentious monument to Manfred Blackwood's greed and dreams. Constructed in the 1880s, without a plantation to justify it, it had no real purpose but to give delight to those who lived in it. The entire property --swamp, land and monstrous house --is known as Blackwood Farm.

That the house and land around it are haunted is not only legend but fact. Goblin is without a doubt the most potent of the spirits, but there are ghosts here as well.

Do they want the Dark Blood from me? For the most part, they seem far too weak for such a possibility, but who is to say that ghosts don't see and learn? G.o.d knows that I have some accursed capacity to draw their attention and to endow them with some crucial vitality. It's been happening all my life.

Have I tried your patience? I hope to G.o.d that I have not.

But this letter may be my one chance with you, Lestat. And so I've said the things that matter to me most.

And when I reach your flat in the Rue Royale, I'll use every bit of wit and skill at my command to place this letter where no one will find it but you.

Believing in that ability, I sign my name, Tarquin Blackwood, known always as Quinn Postscript.

Remember I'm only twenty-two and a bit clumsy. But I can't resist this small request. If you do mean to track me down and eradicate me, could you give me an hour's notice to say some sort of farewell to the one mortal relative I most love in all the world?

In the Vampire Chronicle called Merrick Merrick, you were described as wearing a coat with cameo b.u.t.tons. Was that the truth or someone's fanciful embellishment?

If you wore those cameo b.u.t.tons --indeed, if you chose them carefully and you loved them --then for the sake of those cameos, let me, before being destroyed, say farewell to an elderly woman of incredible charm and benevolence who loves each evening to spread out her hundreds of cameos on her marble table and examine them one by one in the light. She is my great-aunt and my teacher in all things, a woman who has sought to endow me with all I need to live an important life.

I'm not worthy of her love now. I'm not alive now. But she doesn't know this. My nightly visits to her are cautious but nevertheless crucial to her. And should I be taken from her without warning and without some explanation, it would be a cruelty she doesn't deserve.

Ah, there is much more that I could tell you about her cameos --about the role which they have played in my fate.

5.But for now, let me only plead with you. Let me live, and help me destroy Goblin. Or put an end to us both.

Sincerely, Quinn

2.

FOR A LONG TIME after I finished the letter, I didn't move.

I sat listening to the inevitable sounds of Sugar Devil Swamp, my eyes on the pages before me, noting against my will the boring regularity of the handwriting, the muted lamps around me reflected in the marble flooring, the gla.s.s windows open to the night breeze.

All was well in my little palazzo in the swampland.

No sign of Goblin. No sense of Goblin's thirst or enmity. Nothing but that which was natural, and faraway, keen to my vampiric ears, the faint stirrings from Blackwood Manor, where Aunt Queen was just rising, with the loving help of Jasmine, our housekeeper, for a mildly eventful night. Soon the television would be going with an enchanting old black-and-white movie. Dragonwyck Dragonwyck or or Laura, Laura, Rebecca Rebecca or or Wuthering Heights Wuthering Heights. In an hour perhaps Aunt Queen would be saying to Jasmine, "Where is my Little Boy?"

But for now there was time for courage. Time to follow through.

I took the cameo out of my pocket and looked at it. A year ago, when I was still mortal --still alive --I would have had to hold it to the lamp, but not now. I could see it clearly.

It was my own head, in semi-profile, carved skillfully from a fine piece of double-strata sardonyx so that the image was entirely white and remarkably detailed. The background was a pure and s.h.i.+ning black.

It was a heavy cameo, and excellent as to the craft. I'd had it done to give to my beloved Aunt Queen, more of a little joke than anything else, but the Dark Blood had come before the perfect moment. And now that moment was forever past.

What did it show of me? A long oval face, with features that were too delicate --a nose too narrow, eyes round with round eyebrows and a full cupid's-bow mouth that made me look as if I were a twelve-year-old girl. No huge eyes, no high cheekbones, no rugged jaw. Just very pretty, yes, too pretty, which is why I'd scowled for most of the photographs taken for the portrait; but the artist hadn't carved that scowl into the face.

In fact, he'd given me a trace of a smile. My short curly hair he'd rendered in thick swirls as if it were an Apollonian halo. He'd carved my s.h.i.+rt collar, jacket lapel and tie with equal grace.

Of course the cameo said nothing of my height of six foot four inches, that my hair was jet black, my eyes blue, or of the fact that I was slight of build. I had the kind of long thin fingers which were very good for the piano, which I played now and then. And it was my height that told people that in spite of my all too precious face and feminine hands, I really was a young man.

And so there was this enigmatic creature in a good likeness. A creature asking for sympathy. A creature saying cra.s.sly: "Well, think about it, Lestat. I'm young, I'm stupid. And I'm pretty. Look at the cameo. I'm pretty. Give me a chance."