FIFTEEN PAINTEDCARDS FROM A VAMPIRE

TAROTNeil Gaiman

0.

The Fool“What do you want?”

The young man had come to thegraveyard every night for a month now.He had watched the moon paint the coldgranite and the fresh marble and the oldmoss-covered stones and statues in itscold light. He had started at shadows andat owls. He had watched courting couplesand drunks and teenagers taking nervousshortcuts: all the people who comethrough the graveyard at night.

He slept in the day. Nobody cared. Hestood alone in the night and shivered in thecold. It came to him then that he was

standing on the edge of a precipice.

The voice came from the night allaround him, in his head and out of it.

“What do you want?” it repeated.

He wondered if he dared to turn andlook, realized he did not.

“Well? You come here every night, toa place where the living are not welcome.I have seen you. Why?”

“I wanted to meet you,” he said,without looking around. “I want to liveforever.” His voice cracked as he said it.

He had stepped over the precipice.There was no going back. In hisimagination, he could already feel theprick of needle-sharp fangs in his neck, a

sharp prelude to eternal life.

The sound began. It was low and sad,like the rushing of an underground river. Ittook him several long seconds torecognize it as laughter.

“This is not life,” said the voice.

It said nothing more, and after a whilethe young man knew he was alone in thegraveyard.

1.

The MagicianThey asked St. Germain’s manservant ifhis master was truly a thousand years old,as it was rumored he had claimed.

“How would I know?” the manreplied. “I have only been in the master’semploy for three hundred years.”

2.

The PriestessHer skin was pale, and her eyes weredark, and her hair was dyed black. Shewent on a daytime talk show andproclaimed herself a vampire queen. Sheshowed the cameras her dentally craftedfangs, and brought on ex-lovers who, invarious stages of embarrassment, admittedthat she had drawn their blood, and thatshe drank it.

“You can be seen in a mirror, though?”asked the talk show hostess. She was therichest woman in America, and had gotthat way by bringing the freaks and thehurt and the lost out in front of her

cameras and showing their pain to theworld.

The studio audience laughed.

The woman seemed slightly affronted.“Yes. Contrary to what people may think,vampires can be seen in mirrors and ontelevision cameras.”

“Well, that’s one thing you finally gotright, honey,” said the hostess of thedaytime talk show. But she put her handover her microphone as she said it, and itwas never broadcast.

5.

The PopeThis is my body, he said, two thousandyears ago. This is my blood.

It was the only religion that deliveredexactly what it promised: life eternal forits adherents.

There are some of us alive today whoremember him. And some of us claim thathe was a messiah, and some think that hewas just a man with very special powers.But that misses the point. Whatever hewas, he changed the world.

6.

The LoversAfter she was dead, she began to come tohim in the night. He grew pale, and therewere deep circles under his eyes. At first,they thought he was mourning her. Andthen, one night, he was gone.

It was hard for them to obtainpermission to disinter her, but they got it.They hauled up the coffin and theyunscrewed the lid. Then they prized whatthey found out of the box. There was sixinches of water in the bottom, the iron hadcolored it a deep, orangish red. Therewere two bodies in the coffin: hers, ofcourse, and his. He was more decayed

than she was.

Later, someone wondered aloud howboth of them had fitted in a coffin built forone. Especially given her condition, hesaid; for she was very obviously verypregnant.

This caused some confusion, for shehad not been noticeably pregnant when shewas buried.

Still later they dug her up for one lasttime, at the request of the churchauthorities, who had heard rumors of whathad been found in the grave. Her stomachwas flat. The local doctor told them allthat it had just been gas and bloating as thestomach swelled. The townsfolk nodded,almost as if they believed him.

7.

The ChariotIt was genetic engineering at its finest:they created a breed of human to sail thestars. They needed to be possessed ofimpossibly long life spans, for thedistances between the stars were vast;space was limited, and their food suppliesneeded to be compact; they needed to beable to process local sustenance, and tocolonize the worlds they found with theirown kind.

The homeworld wished the colonistswell and sent them on their way. Theyremoved all traces of their location fromthe ships’ computers first, however. To be

on the safe side.

10.

The Wheel of FortuneWhat did you do with the doctor? sheasked, and laughed. I thought the doctorcame in here ten minutes ago.

I’m sorry, I said. I was hungry.

And we both laughed.

I’ll go find her for you, she said.

I sat in the doctor’s office, picking myteeth. After a while the assistant cameback.

I’m sorry, she said. The doctor musthave stepped out for a while. Can I makean appointment for you for next week?

I shook my head. I’ll call, I said. But,for the first time that day, I was lying.

11.

Justice“It is not human,” said the magistrate, “andit does not deserve the trial of a humanthing.”

“Ah,” said the advocate. “But wecannot execute it without a trial: there arethe precedents. A pig, that had eaten achild who had fallen into its sty. It wasfound guilty and hanged. A swarm of bees,found guilty of stinging an old man todeath, was burned by the public hangman.We owe the hellish creature no less.”

The evidence against the baby wasincontestable. It amounted to this: awoman had brought the baby from the

country. She said it was hers and that herhusband was dead. She lodged at thehouse of a coach maker and his wife. Theold coach maker complained ofmelancholia and lassitude, and was, withhis wife and their lodger, found dead bytheir servant. The baby was alive in itscradle, pale and wide-eyed, and there wasblood on its face and lips.

The jury found the little thing guiltybeyond all doubt, and condemned it todeath.

The executioner was the town butcher.In the sight of all the town he cut the babein two, and flung the pieces onto the fire.

His own baby had died earlier thatsame week. Infant mortality in those days

was a hard thing but common. Thebutcher’s wife had been brokenhearted.

She had already left the town to see hersister in the city, and, within the week, thebutcher joined her. The three of them—butcher, wife, and babe—made theprettiest family you ever did see.

14.

TemperanceShe said she was a vampire. One thing Iknew already, the woman was a liar. Youcould see it in her eyes. Black as coalsthey were, but she never quite looked atyou, staring at invisibles over yourshoulder, behind you, above you, twoinches in front of your face.

“What does it taste like?” I asked her.This was in the parking lot, behind thebar. She worked the graveyard shift in thebar, mixed the finest drinks, but neverdrank anything herself.

“V8 juice,” she said. “Not the low-sodium kind, but the original. Or a salty

gazpacho.”

“What’s gazpacho?”

“A sort of vegetable soup.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“No.”

“So you drink blood? Just like I drinkV8?”

“Not exactly,” she said. “If you getsick of drinking V8 you can drinksomething else.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Actually, I don’t likeV8 much.”

“See?” she said. “In China it’s notblood we drink, it’s spinal fluid.”

“What’s that taste like?”

“Nothing much. Clear broth.”

“You’ve tried it?”

“I know people.”

I tried to figure out if I could see herreflection in the wing mirror of the truckwe were leaning against, but it was dark,and I couldn’t tell.

15.

The DevilThis is his portrait. Look at his flat,

yellow teeth, his ruddy face. He has horns,and he carries a foot-long wooden stake inone hand and his wooden mallet in theother.

Of course, there is no such thing as thedevil.

16.

The TowerThe tower’s built of spit and

spite,

Without a sound, without a sight.

The biter bit, the bitter bite. (It’s betterto be out at night.)

17.

The StarThe older, richer, ones follow the winter,taking the long nights where they findthem. Still, they prefer the NorthernHemisphere to the South.

“You see that star?” they say, pointingto one of the stars in the constellation ofDraco, the dragon. “We came from there.One day we shall return.”

The younger ones sneer and jeer andlaugh at this. Still, as the years becomecenturies, they find themselves becominghomesick for a place they have neverbeen; and they find the northern climesreassuring, as long as Draco twines about

the greater and lesser bears, up near chillPolaris.

19.

The Sun“Imagine,” she said, “that there wassomething in the sky that was going to hurtyou, perhaps even kill you. A huge eagleor something. Imagine that if you went outin daylight the eagle would get you.

“Well,” she said. “That’s how it is forus. Only it’s not a bird. It’s bright,beautiful, dangerous daylight, and Ihaven’t seen it now in a hundred years.”

20.

JudgmentIt’s a way of talking about lust withouttalking about lust, he told them.

It is a way of talking about sex, andfear of sex, and death, and fear of death,and what else is there to talk about?

22.

The World“You know the saddest thing,” she said.“The saddest thing is that we’re you.”

I said nothing.

“In your fantasies,” she said, “mypeople are just like you. Only better. Wedon’t die or age or suffer from pain orcold or thirst. We’re snappier dressers.We possess the wisdom of the ages. Andif we crave blood, well, it is no more thanthe way you people crave food oraffection or sunlight—and besides, it getsus out of the house. Crypt. Coffin.Whatever.”

“And the truth is?” I asked her.

“We’re you,” she said. “We’re you,with all your fuckups and all the thingsthat make you human—all your fears andlonelinesses and confusions…none of thatgets better.

“But we’re colder than you are.Deader. I miss daylight and food andknowing how it feels to touch someoneand care. I remember life, and meetingpeople as people and not just as things tofeed on or control, and I remember what itwas to feel something, anything, happy orsad or anything…” And then she stopped.

“Are you crying?” I asked.

“We don’t cry,” she told me. Like Isaid, the woman was a liar.