The Queen of the Damned - Anne Rice - Hardcover

I THE LEGEND OF THE TWINS Tell it in rhythmic continuity. Detail by detail the living creatures. Tell it as must, the rhythm solid in the shape. Woman. Arms lifted. Shadow eater. STAN RICE from "Elegy" Whiteboy (1976) "CALL HER FOR ME, " HE SAID. "TELL HER I HAVE had the strangest dreams, that they were about the twins. You must call her!" His daughter didn't want to do it. She watched him fumble with the book. His hands were his enemies now, he often said. At ninety-one, he could scarcely hold a pencil or turn a page. "Daddy," she said, "that woman's probably dead." Everybody he had known was dead. He'd outlived his colleagues; he'd outlived his brothers and sisters, and even two of his children. In a tragic way, he had outlived the twins, because no one read his book now. No one cared about "the legend of the twins." "No, you call her," he said. "You must call her. You tell her that I dreamed of the twins. I saw them in the dream."" "Why would she want to know that, Daddy?" His daughter took the little address book and paged through it slowly. Dad all these people, long dead. The men who had worked with her father on so many expeditions, the editors and photographers who had worked with him on his book. Even his enemies who had said his life was wasted, that his research had come to nothing; even the most scurrilous, who had accused him of doctoring pictures and lying about the caves, which her father had never done. Why should she be still alive, the woman who had financed his long-ago expeditions, the rich woman who had sent so much money for so many years? "You must ask her to come! Tell her it's very important. I must describe to her what I've seen." To come? All the way to Rio de Janeiro because an old man had had strange dreams? His daughter found the page, and yes, there was the name and the number. And the date beside it, only two years old. "She lives in Bangkok, Daddy." What time was it in Bangkok? She had no idea. "She'll come to me. I know she will." He closed his eyes and settled back onto the pillow. He was small now, shrunken. But when he opened his eyes, there was her father looking at her, in spite of the shriveling yellowed skin, the dark spots on the backs of his wrinkled hands, the bald head. He appeared to be listening to the music now, the soft singing of the Vampire Lestat, coming from her room She would turn it down if it kept him awake. She wasn't much for American rock singers, but this one she'd rather liked. "Tell her I must speak to her!" he said suddenly, as though coming back to himself. "All right, Daddy, if you want me to." She turned off the lamp by the bed. "You go back to sleep." "Don't give up till you find her. Tell her--the twins! I've seen the twins." But as she was leaving, he called her back again with one of those sudden moans that always frightened her. In the light from the hall, she could see he was pointing to the books on the far wall. "Get it for me," he said. He was struggling to sit up again. "The book, Daddy?" "The twins, the pictures..." She took down the old volume and brought it to him and put it in his lap. She propped the pillows up higher for him and turned on the lamp again. It hurt her to feel how light he was as she lifted him; it hurt her to see him struggle to put on his silver-rimmed glasses. He took the pencil in hand, to read with it, ready to write, as he had always done, but then he let it fall and she caught it and put it back on the table. "You go call her!" he said. She nodded. But she stayed there, just in cRice, Anne is the author of 'The Queen of the Damned - Anne Rice - Hardcover' with ISBN 9780517052273 and ISBN 051705227X.