I was standing on a high pavilion and I could see the beautiful mountains all around me, the lower portions of the slopes covered in deep green forest, and the sky itself was brightly blue.
I looked down and I saw a crowd of thousands surrounding the pavilion. Over on the tops of other pyramids there stood huge masses of people. The people were whispering and shouting and chanting. And there was a small group on my pavilion, all of them faithfully at my side.
"You will call down the rain," said the voice in my ear, "and it will come. But one day, the snow will come instead of the rain, and on that day, you will die."
"No, that will never happen!" I said. I realized I was growing dizzy. I was going to fall from the pavilion. I turned around and reached out for the hands of my fellows. "Are you priests, tell me, what you are." I asked. "I'm David and I demand that you tell me, I'm not the person you believe me to be!"
I realized that I was in the cave. I had all but fallen to the thick soft floor. Merrick was shouting at me to get up. Before me stood the weeping spirit.
"The Lonely Spirit, how many times have you called me?" said the tall being sadly. "How many times have you, the magician, reached out for the lonely soul? You have no right to call those between life and death. Leave the mask behind you. The mask is wrong, don't you understand what I'm telling you!"
Merrick cried my name. I felt the mask ripped from my face. I looked up. I was lying down on my cot, and she was standing over me.
"Good God, I'm sick," I told her. "I'm very sick. Get me the shaman. No, there's no time for the shaman. We must set out for the airport now."
"Quiet, be quiet, lie still," said Merrick. But her face was dark with fear. I heard her thoughts clearly. It's happening all over again, Just as it happened to Matthew. It's happening to David. I myself have some deep immunity, but it's happening to David.
I grew very quiet within myself. I'll fight it, I resolved, and I let my head roll to one side on the pillow, hoping that the pillow would be cool against my cheek. Though I heard Merrick crying out for the men to come to the tent immediately, I saw another person sitting on her cot.
It was a tall lean man with brown skin and a narrow face, and arms covered with jade bracelets. He had a high forehead and shoulderlength black hair. He was looking at me in a quiet manner. I saw the dark red of his long gown, and the gleam of his toenail in the light.
"It's you again," I said. "You think you're going to kill me. You think you can reach out from your ancient grave to take my life?"
"I don't want to kill you," he whispered, with little or no change in his placid expression. "Give back the mask for your own sake and for hers."
"No," I said. "You must realize I can't do it. I can't leave such a mystery. I can't simply turn my back. You had your time and now is my time, and I'm taking the mask back with me. She's taking it with her, really. But even if she surrendered, I would do it on my own."
I went on pleading with him, in a low reasonable voice, that he should understand. I said, "Life belongs to those who are alive." But by then the tent was truly crowded with the men who had come with us. Someone had asked me to keep a thermometer under my tongue. And Merrick was saying, "I can't get a pulse." Of the journey to Guatemala City, I remember nothing.
As for the hospital, it might have been a medical facility anywhere in the world.
Repeatedly I turned my head and I found myself alone with the bronze-skinned man with the oval face and the jade bracelets, though more often than not he did not speak. When I tried to speak, others answered, and the man simply melted as another world seemed to supplant that which I'd left behind.
When I was fully conscious, which wasn't often, I seemed convinced that people in Guatemala would know more of the tropical illness from which I suffered. I wasn't afraid. I knew from the expression of my bronze-skinned visitor that I wasn't dying. And I do not remember being transferred to a hospital in New Orleans at all. The visitor never appeared after the return to New Orleans.
By that time I was on the mend, and when days did begin to connect with one another, I was running only a low grade temperature, and the "toxin" was completely gone. Soon I no longer required intravenous nourishment. My strength was coming back.
My case was nothing exceptional. It had to do with a species of amphibian which I must have encountered in the brush. Even touching this creature can be fatal. My contact must have been indirect.
Merrick and the others were not afflicted, that was soon made clear to me, and I was much relieved, though in my state of confusion, I had to confess I had not thought of them as I should.
Merrick spent a great deal of time with me, but Aaron was almost always there as well. As soon as I would start to address an important question to Merrick, a nurse or a doctor came into the room. At other times I was confused as to the order of events and didn't want to reveal that confusion. And occasionally, very occasionally, I would wake in the night, convinced I'd been back in the jungles in my dreams.
At last, though I was still technically sick, I was brought by ambulance to Oak Haven and moved into the upstairs left front room.
This is one of the more gracious and lovely bedrooms in the house, and, in my robe and slippers, I was walking out on the front porch by the evening of that day. It was winter, but wondrously green all around me, and the breeze off the river was welcome.
At last, after two days of "small talk," which was threatening to drive me out of my mind, Merrick came to my room alone. She wore a nightgown and robe and she appeared exhausted. Her rich brown hair was held back from her temples by two amber combs. I could see the relief in her face as she looked at me.
I was in bed, with pillows propped and a book on the Maya people open in my lap.
"I thought you were going to die," she said plainly. "I prayed for you in a way I've never prayed before."
"Do you think God heard your prayers?" I asked. Then I realized she hadn't mentioned praying to God at all. "Tell me," I asked, "was I ever in real danger?"
She seemed shocked by the question. Then she fell quiet, as though debating what she might say. I already had part of my answer, purely from her reaction to the question, so I waited patiently until she meant to speak.
"There were times in Guatemala," she said, "when they told me you were not likely to make it much longer. I sent them away, insofar as they'd listen, and I put the mask over my face. I could see your spirit just above your body; I could see it struggling to rise and free itself from your body. I could see it stretched over you, the double of you, rising, and I put out my hand and I pressed on it, and made it go back into its place."
I felt a dreadful overwhelming love for her.
"Thank God you did it," I said.
She repeated my words from the jungle village.
"Life belongs to those who are alive."
"You remember me saying it?" I asked her, or rather I expressed to her my gratitude.
"You said it often," she replied. "You thought you were talking to someone, the someone we'd both seen in the mouth of the cave before we'd made our escape. You thought you were engaged in a debate with him. And then one morning, very early, when I woke up in the chair and found you conscious, you told me you'd won."
"What are we going to do with the mask?" I asked. "I see myself becoming enthralled with it. I see myself testing it on others, but in secret. I see myself becoming its unwholesome slave."
"We won't let that happen," she said. "Besides, others aren't affected in the same way."
"How do you know?" I asked.
"The men in the tent, when you were getting sicker and sicker, they picked it up, they thought it was a curio, of course. One of them thought we'd bought it from the village people. He was the first to look through it. He saw nothing. Then another one of the men did the same thing. So forth and so on."
"What about here in New Orleans?"
"Aaron saw nothing through it," she said. And then in something of a sad voice she added: "I didn't tell him all that happened. That's for you to do, if you wish."
"And you?" I pressed. "What do you see when you look through the mask now?" She shook her head. She looked off a bit, desperately biting into her lip, and then she looked at me.
"I see Honey when I look through it. Almost always. I see Honey in the Sunshine, and that's all. I see her in the oaks outside of the Motherhouse. I see her in the garden. I see her whenever I look through the mask. The world is as it is around her. But she's always there." There was a passage of time and then she confessed:
"I believe it was all Honey's doing. Honey goaded me with nightmares. Oncle Vervain was never really there. It was always Honey in the Sunshine, greedy for life, and how can I blame her? She sent us back there to get the mask so that she could come through. I've vowed I won't let her do it. I mean, I won't let her grow stronger and stronger through me. I won't be used and destroyed by her. It's like you said. Life belongs to those who are alive."
"Would it do no good to speak to her? Would it do no good to tell her that she's dead?"
"She knows," said Merrick sadly. "She's a powerful and crafty spirit. If you tell me as Superior General that you want to attempt an exorcism, and that you want me to communicate with her, I'll do it—but on my own, never, never will I give in to her. She's too clever. She's too strong."
"I'll never ask you to do such a thing," I said quickly. "Come, sit beside me here. Let me hold you. I'm too weak to do you any harm."
Now that I look back on these things, I'm not sure why I didn't tell Merrick all about the spirit with the oval face and how he had continued to appear to me throughout my illness, and especially when I was close to death. Perhaps we had exchanged confidences about my visions when I was feverish. I only know that we did not discuss them in detail when we took stock of the whole event.
As for my personal reaction to the spirit, I was afraid of him. I had robbed a place that was precious to him. I had done it fiercely and selfishly, and though the illness had burnt away much of my desire to explore the mystery of the cave, I feared the spirit's return.
As a matter of fact, I did see this spirit again.
It was many years later. It was on the night in Barbados when Lestat came to see me, and decided to make me a vampire against my will.
As you well know, I was no longer the elder David. It was after our dreadful ordeal with the Body Thief. I felt invincible in my new young body and I had no thought to ask Lestat for eternal life. When it was clear that he meant to force me, I fought him with all I had.
At some point in this vain attempt to save myself from the vampiric blood, I called on God, the angels, anyone who might help me. I called on my orisha, Oxalá, in the old Portuguese Candomble tongue. I don't know if my prayers were heard by my orisha, but the room was suddenly assailed by small spirits, none of whom could frighten or hinder Lestat in any way. And as he drained my blood to the very point of death, it was the bronze-skinned spirit of the cave whom I glimpsed as my eyes closed.
It seemed to me, as I was losing the battle to live, let alone the battle to be mortal, that I saw the cave spirit standing near me with his arms out, and I saw pain in his face.
The figure was wavering, yet fully realized. I saw the bracelets on his arms. I saw his long red robe. I saw the tears on his cheeks.
It was only an instant. The world of solid things and spiritual things flickered and went out. I fell into a stupor. I remember nothing until the moment when Lestat's supernatural blood flooded my mouth. By then, I saw only Lestat and I knew my soul was entering on yet another adventure, one which would carry me forward beyond my most appalling dreams.
I never saw the cave spirit again.
But let me finish my tale of Merrick. There is not a great deal more to be said.
After a week of convalescence in the New Orleans Motherhouse, I dressed in my usual tweed suit and came downstairs for breakfast, with the other members assembled there.
Later, Merrick and I walked in the garden, which was filled with lush beautiful dark-leafed camillias, which thrive in the winter, even through light frost. I saw blossoms of pink and red and white which I never forgot. Giant green elephant ear and purple flowering orchid plants were growing everywhere. How beautiful Louisiana can be in winter. How verdant and vigorous and remote.
"I've put the mask into the vault, in a sealed box, under my name," Merrick told me. "I suggest we leave it there."
"Absolutely," I said. "But you must promise me, that if you ever change your mind about the mask, you'll call me before you take even the simplest steps."
"I don't want to see Honey anymore!" she said under her breath. "I told you. She wants to use me, and that I won't allow. I was ten years old when she was murdered. I'm tired, oh so tired of grieving for Honey. You'll never have to worry. I won't touch the mask again if I can help it, believe me."