INT. FLAT. NIGHT
Lestat playing the piano. Louis reading. Claudia enters, wearing a cape and hat. She walks to the piano, sits at the end of the piano and stares at him as he plays.
LESTAT What is it now? You irritate me! Your very presence irritates me!
CLAUDIA (SWEETLY) Does it?
LESTAT Yes. And I'll tell you something else! I've met someone who will make a better vampire than both of you.
CLAUDIA Is that supposed to frighten me?
LESTAT You're spoilt because you're an only child. You need a brother. Or I do. I'm weary of you both.
CLAUDIA I suppose we could people the world with vampires, the three of us.
LESTAT Not you my dear.
CLAUDIA You're a liar. But you upset my plans.
LESTAT What plans?
CLAUDIA I came to make peace with you, even if you're the father of lies. I want things to be as they were.
Louis perks up, puzzled.
LESTAT Stop pestering me then!
CLAUDIA Oh, Lestat. I must do more than that. I've brought a present for you.
LESTAT Then I hope its a beautiful woman with endowments you will never possess.
Claudia stares at him for a moment.
CLAUDIA Better than that.
She takes his hand and leads him into an inner room. Louis follows behind.
CLAUDIA You haven't fed enough. I can tell by your colour.
INT. DINING ROOM. NIGHT.
Two beautiful youths, lying asleep on a couch, by a table full with a half-eaten meal. Lestat sighs.
LESTAT Oh, Claudia, you've outdone yourself. Where did you find them?
CLAUDIA Drunk on brandy wine. A thimblefull. I thought of you when I saw them.
LESTAT We forgive each other then?
Claudia stares at him, sitting. She nods. Lestat bites into the neck of one of the youths, sucks greddily and horribly. Claudia watches him without expression. He finished one, is about to take the other when he staggers. He looks at Claudia.
LESTAT Absinthe? You gave then absinthe?
CLAUDIA No. Laudanum.
Lestat stares wildly at her, tries to move towars her, then slips to the floor.
LESTAT Laudanum!
CLAUDIA Yes. It killed them, unfortunately. But it keeps the blood warm.
Lestat tries to rise.
LESTAT Ah Louis, Louis, she killed them... and let me drink...
Louis watches, apalled. He goes to move.
CLAUDIA Don't Louis --
LESTAT Louis, put me in my coffin...
CLAUDIA I'll put you in your coffin. Forever.
She pulls a knife out from under her shawl, walks rapidly to him and slashes his throat. Blood explodes from it.
LOUIS Claudia! Don't do this thing!!!
LESTAT Louis, Louis, I gave you the gift --- help me ---
Claudia lacerates his face. Blood pours from everywhere. She plunges the knife in his chest. He falls back, fangs bared, clutching the knife. Claudia leaps on him then, bites deep into his neck as he dies. Louis screams, runs forward, pulls her away.
LOUIS What have you done, Claudia -
He drags her off Lestat, tries to pull her out of the room. She hisses at him.
CLAUDIA Louis! Look what's happening to him!!
Louis looks. The fllor is a sea of blood. Lestat has begun to shrivel, as if he'd been a bag of blood. His skin is shrivelling against his bones like parchment, his eyes are slipping back into his skull-like face. His lush, beautiful hair remains unchanged. But his clothes are virtually being emptied of the body. It is no more than bones, wrapped in paper and the pupils of the eyes suddenly roll up into the papered skull.
LOUIS Lestat. Oh, God forgive us.
CLAUDIA Don't mock me, Louis. Help me.
She stares at the shrivelled skeleton in its skin wrapping. She is fascinated. She sees the vampiric blood flow all over the floor. She touches it and brings her finger to her lips.
CLAUDIA Goodnight, sweet prince, may flights of devils wing you to your rest.
Louis walks forward, touches the skeleton, the blonde hair.
LOUIS He's dead, Claudia, dead.
CLAUDIA The one good lesson he taught me, Louis. Never drink from the dead.
She stands up, all business suddenly.
CLAUDIA Help me. We must get rid of him.
She drags the coverlet from the table, knocking the crockery over the dead youths, and wraps Lestat's skeleton in it. She takes a bunch of chrysanthemums and places them in his skeleton hands.
CLAUDIA Should we burn him? Bury him? What would he have liked, Louis?
LOUIS Don't mock, Claudia...
CLAUDIA The swamp...
EXT. CARRIAGE. NIGHT.
Louis whipping the horses. Claudia beside him. Lestat's skeleton in the back, with the bodies of the two dead youths.
CLAUDIA In Europe, Louis. We shall meet our own kind. Find the one who made him. Learn what it means.
LOUIS And suppose the one who made him knows nothing and the vampire who made him knows nothing, and it goes back, nothing proceeding from nothing, until there is nothing! And we must live with the knowledge that there is no knowledge.
The carriage pulls up by a swamp. Mist everywhere. Overhanging creepers.
LOUIS And if we find the one who made him? Do we tell him we destroyed his own creation? The vampire Lestat?
Louis drags out the bodies of the boys. He slides them into the waters of the swamp. We see ripples in the water and the churning of alligators, as they attack the corpses. Louis takes Lestat's skeleton in his arms. He slides it into the waters. The alligators speed towards it.
CLAUDIA He belongs with those reptiles, Louis. He deserved to die.
LOUIS Then maybe so do we. Every night of our lives. He was my brother. My maker. He gave me this life, whatever it is.
CLAUDIA I did it for us, Louis. So we could be free.
He stands there, saying nothing.
CLAUDIA Louis, look at me.
LOUIS (BITTERLY) I can't. Go away from me.
Claudia is shocked to her core. She steps back. Louis stares at the rippling waters. Gradually the movement of alligators stops. Then he hears a sound he hasn't heard in years. Soft, chocking. He turns, sees Claudia sitting by a cypress tree, like a little girl for the first time in years. She is weeping copiously.
LOUIS Claudia - You're crying -
We see her face, tears of blood running down it. She is heartbroken, lost.
CLAUDIA You never talked to me like that - in all these years.
LOUIS And you never cried -
CLAUDIA I can't bear it when you do - I would die rather than lose you Louis. I would die the way he died.
Louis gathers her in his arms.
LOUIS Hush, Claudia, hush now my dear -
CLAUDIA Tell me you don't hate me Louis. I did it for you -
Louis walks her towards the carriage.
LOUIS I love you Claudia. Always. And we are free now, Claudia. No Lestat. Just the two of us, beginning the great adventure of our lives.
He lifts her into the carriage and drives off, leaving the silent waters of the swamp.
INT. FLAT. NIGHT.
Sturdy mullato workmen lifting cases and trunks out of the apartment. All the furniture is covered in white sheets. Claudia dressed in a cap and hat, is playing the piano by the light of one remaining oil-lamp. Louis comes from her room with the cage of canaries.
LOUIS The birds. We forgot about the birds. There's nothing for it but to let them go.
He opens the cage, and the canaries fly around the room. There is a knocking on the door. Claudia falters.
LAUDIA What was that?
LOUIS The workmen must have a trunk - don't stop, cherie -
He goes downstairs. Claudia plays a moment, then stops, perturbed. She goes to the window. Then sees something out there that makes her face go white. She screams.
CLAUDIA Louis!!!
THE STAIRWAY --
Louis walking to the door. The knocking gets louder. THE PARLOUR -- Claudia runs for the stairs, after Louis. THE HALLWAY -- Louis reaches the door. The knocking gets louder. He opens the door as - CLAUDIA - Reaches the stairs. She screams -
CLAUDIA Don't Louis -
But Louis has opened the door. Nothing there. He looks back at Claudia, puzzled, then at the door again when, swooping into his vision comes the nightmare image of -- LESTAT -- In filthy swamp-soaked rags, robust again, but his flesh shrivelled, covered in scars, his eyes riddled, bloodshot. he roars.
LESTAT WHERE IS SHE? WHERE IS THAT ACCURSED CHILD?
Louis throws his body against the door, slamming it on Lestat's reaching hand. The hand withdraws, as Lestat roars. Louis bolts the door. Louis runs up the stairs, sweeps Claudia in his arms, watching apalled as the door shudders with the force of Lestat's body.
IN THE PARLOUR
Louis runs through with Claudia in his arms.
LOUIS It can't be -
CLAUDIA It is! Take the back stairwell -
Suddenly Lestat crashes through the casement window, scattering blood everywhere, reefing himself on the shattered glass. He tumbles to the floor and gets unsteadily to his feet.
LESTAT GIVE ME HER LOUIS!!
Louis throws Claudia behind him and hurls himself on Lestat, who fights like a ravening animal, bits of his broken body coming off in the process. Then with a terrifying effort, Lestat hurls Louis off, goes for Claudia, who grabs the poker from the fireplace, scatters burning coals over him. He falls back, then comes at her again, as the drapes catch fire. Louis grabs the lamp.
LOUIS Stay back--- for the love of God... or I'll burn you alive...
Lestat lunges again at Claudia. Louis hurls the lamp, which explodes him in flame. Lestat screams in agony, whirls around the room, then comes on Claudia again. She hurls another lamp. Louis throws the flaming sheets around him, wrapping him further in fire. Lestat falls to his knees, choking, hands up over his face in the smoke. The whole parlour is afire. Louis gathers up Claudia, smothering the burning house, carries her down the back stairs, through the carriage way and through the gathering crowds of mortals into the street.
EXT. STREET. NIGHT.
Louis running, with Claudia in his arms. He looks back at the flames of the house. Sound of a ship's horn.
CLAUDIA The ship is sailing wihout us!
LOUIS Not yet.
Holding her tightly, Louis runs.
EXT. DECK OF SHIP. NEAR DAWN.
Louis stands at the railings in the morning mist as the ship moves down the river. He sees -CITY OF NEW ORLEANS - With flame lighting up the sky.
LOUIS (VO) Though the fire seemed to spread through the quartier, I stood on that deck until dawn, fearful he would come out again of the very river like some monster to destroy us both. And all the while I thought, Lestat, we deserve your vengeance. You gave me the dark gift. And I delivered you into the hands of death for the second time.
INT. ROOM. SAN FRANCISCO
Louis and Malloy.
MALLOY Did he die in the fire?
LOUIS He was dead to us. We were free. That was all that mattered.
EXT. SHIP. EVENING.
The ship, shrouded in mist.
LOUIS (VO) Though the ship was blessedly free of rats, a strange plague nonetheless struck its passengers.
A body is slipped into the sea. A priest reads last rites to a mourning family.
INT. SHIPS HOLD.
Turnks and cases, creaking with the ship's movement. Dead rats everywhere.
LOUIS (VO) Claudia and I alone seemed imune. We kept to ourselves, pondering the mystery of Lestat and the greater mystery of each other.
EXT. SHIP. NIGHT.
Passing through the Straits of Gibralter.
LOUIS (VO) We reached the Mediterranean. I wanted those waters to be blue. They were black, nightime waters and how I suffered then, straining to remember the colour that a young man's senses had taken for granted, that my memory had let slip away for eternity. It was balck off the coast of Italy, black off the coast of Greece, Europe itself was black.
EXT. DECK. NIGHT.
Claudia, sitting with an easel and sketch-pad, sketching the bay of Naples. A beautifully realised drawing, all in shades of grey and black. Louis observes.
CLAUDIA Louis, your quest is for darkness only. This sea is not your sea. They myths of men are not your myths. Their history isn't yours.
The sketch changes to a sketch of - THE ACROPOLIS -- In the moonlight.
LOUIS (VO) We saw the Acropolis by moonlight, shades of grey and silver. And I longed for the brilliant white of those marbles in the hot sun of Homer...
The sketch changes to a sketch of -- TRANSYLVANIA -- And the traditional shapes of the vampire landscape.
LOUIS (VO) We docked at Varna and searched the rural countryside of the Carpathians, for what she liked to term "our kind"... a montage of sketches now - A TRANSLYVANIAN VILLAGE, A GRAVEYARD. RUINED CASTLE AFTER CASTLE, LOOKING INTO THE SKIES...
LOUIS The quest for these Old World vampires filled me with bitterness. We searched village after village, ruin after ruin and I was glad when always we found nothing. For what could the damned really have to say to the damned?
INT. ROOM. SAN FRANCISCO.
Malloy and Louis.
MALLOY You found nothing?
LOUIS Peasant rumours, superstitions about garlic, crosses, stakes in the heart all that - how do you say again? Bull shit. But one of our kind? Not a whisper.
MALLOY No vampires in Transylvania? No Count Dracula?
LOUIS Fictions, my friend. The vulgar fictions of a demented Irishman... So we repaired to Paris...
EXT. BOULEVARD FACADE OF GRAND HOTEL AND PARIS OPERA.
Crowds and gaslight everywhere. Carriages, horses, OPERA coming from the opera house.
LOUIS (VO) I think the very name of Paris brought a rush of pleasure to me that was extraordinary. I was a Creole, after all and Paris was the mother of New Orleans, a universe whole and entire unto herself...
EXT. 18TH CENTURE PALACES ALONG THE SEINE - NIGHT
The high walls of the Louvre, dark figures walking in pairs through the shadowy tulieries.
EXT. STREET - SHOP WINDOW
Claudia, in furtrimmed muff and bonnet, peers through the glass at a display of dolls. Each doll in there seems to resemble her, with blonde hair and blue eyes. She peers deep into the shop and sees - MADELEINE, a young woman bent over a workbench painting a doll's face, oblivious to being watched.
INT. OPERA STAIRCASE
Louis and Claudia hurrying hand in hand with a crowd of mortals towards the sound of an ORCHESTRA TURNING beyond.
INT. NOTRE DAME.
Claudia and Louis standing in the deep shadows, looking at the branching arches. Louis is overcome with sadness, Claudia is fascinated.
INT. GALLERY.
Louis and Claudia walk among a series of mythological nudes by Poussin.
INT. SALON. NIGHT.
Claudia, surrounded by discarded dresses and outfits, being attended by cautouriers. All the clothes are tiny, to fit her frame, but have an adult cut and shape.
LOUIS We were alive again. We were in love and so euphoric was I that I yielded to her every desire...
INT. SUMPRUOUS HOTEL SUITE
Full of late 19th century furniture, lots of Empire style, Regency, gilt, velvet and brocade. CLOSE ON A HUGE BLACK EBONY CHEST against a wall, solemn among all the light and glitter. CLAUDIA by a large gilt mirror, in her new clothes. She is covered with jewelry, fixing earrings to her ears.
CLAUDIA Help me, mon chere...
Louis walks over, helps her with the earrings.
CLAUDIA How do I look?
LOUIS Still my beautiful child.
Claudia laughs.
CLAUDIA A beautiful child! Is that what you still think I am?
LOUIS Yes...
He turns away.
CLAUDIA Why do you turn away? Why don't you look.
She twirls, looking at herself in the emirror, then stops, stares at herself.
CLAUDIA You want me to be your daughter forever, don't you?
LOUIS Yes.
CLAUDIA Well tell me, papa. What was it like making love?
Louis is stunned. He blushes.
CLAUDIA You don't remember? Or you never knew.
LOUIS It was something hurried...and seldom savoured... something acute that was quickly lost. It was the pale shadow of killing.
CLAUDIA But how will I ever know, Louis?
She stares at him through the mirror.
CLAUDIA I'll never find them, will I? My own kind...
EXT. BOULEVARD. EVENING.
Louis and Claudia walk along a boulevard like father and daughter. All around them are bourgeois Parisian families on their evening stroll. Claudia points at the children that pass.
CLAUDIA Have I anything in common with her, Louis?
She points to a beautiful French child walking by with her mother.
CLAUDIA Or her, or her - or any of them?
LOUIS Claudia, you torture yourself.
CLAUDIA They are ducklings, that will grow into swans. Whereas I must be the duckling forever.
LOUIS You are more beautiful than any of them.
EXT. DOLL-SHOP. NIGHT.
We see Madeleine, inside, painting a doll's face. Louis and Claudia arrive outside.
CLAUDIA All her dolls resemble me.
POV -- Claudia's face, with the dolls in the background. The resemblance is uncanny.
CLAUDIA Are they my kind Louis? Dolls never change either.
LOUIS You are neither, Claudia. Now stop this --
Madeleine sees Claudia from inside. She waves.
LOUIS You know her?
CLAUDIA Yes. Should I take her, Louis? Among her dolls? make a doll of her in turn?
LOUIS Come, Claudia...
He takes her arm. But Claudia shakes him off, and moves into the shop.
EXT. LATIN QUARTER. NIGHT.
Louis walks briskly, head bowed.
LOUIS (VO) For a time we had been almost human, in the sensual whirl of what Paris had to offer. But the human delights of that city only served to remind her of the ageless child she had become. I felt her pain as I walked until I become aware that I was being followed. CU LOUIS' FEET - Walking. A step echoes his. Louis stops. Turns, sees nothing. Then walks again. The echoing steps begin again. Louis again. Sees a shadow, flitting.
LOUIS Claudia!
Nothing. He walks again, hears the same effect. Then he stops. He stares at a gas-lamp opposite.
LOUIS (VO) So it was when I had given up the search for vampires that a vampire found me...
Santiago, a tall vampire, materialises under the gaslight. And Louis gradually realises that this vampire has assumed the same attitude, posture, clothes and hair-style as Louis. Louis gives an involuntary shake of the head. Santiago mimics. Louis takes a step forwards. Santiago mimics. Louis folds his arms. Santiago mimics.
LOUIS AND STATIAGO (SIMULTANEOUSLY) Clever.
LOUIS You mean me harm?
SANTIAGO (A BEAT LATER) You mean me harm?
Louis calculates.
LOUIS Trickster. Buffoon!
Santiago echoes the first word, but not the second. Louis has broken his composure. He turns his back on Santiago, only to come face to face with Santiago right in front of him. Again Louis turns this back to find Santiago facing him. Louis turns, glowers, refusing to look at him.
LOUIS I've searched the world for an immortal and this is what I find?
Slowly he looks up. Santiago draws close, breaking the mirror trick and suddenly slams Louis back against the wall. Louis is furious. He regains his balance, strikes out at Santiago and when Santiago vanishes, to reappear behind him, Louis slams back his elbow into his midriff. Santiago staggers, amazed and then rushes at Louis, throwing him down. Louis rolls back to his feet, then to his amazement sees two vampires, one in front, one behind. He looks both ways, then sees one has vanished. He stares, awestruck, at this new one:
ARMAND He looks like an angel.
ARMAND You are all right.
He reaches into his waistcoat, takes an engraved invitation out of his pocket and thrusts it at Louis. Louis reads it alound, as we see: THEATRE DES VAMPIRES By Special Invitation Friday, 9 p.m.
ARMAND Bring the petit beauty with you. No one will harm you. I won't allow it. Remember my name. Armand.
Armand bows and vanishes. Louis listens to the silence.
EXT BOULEVARD DES CAPUCHINES - THEATRE DES VAMPIRES - NIGHT
Louis formally dressed with Claudia in rich attire on his arm. They pass people buying tickets for the theatre and go inside.
LOUIS Remember what I've told you. They'll have different powers. They'll read your thoughts if you allow it.
They draw close to: HUGE POSTERS, reading -- THEATRE DES VAMPIRES PRESENTS THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH By Edgar Allen Poe. The posters are illustrated with cliched images of vampires overcoming damsels in distress.
ANOTHER ANGLE
CLAUDIA But this can't be real. This is nonsense.
LOUIS Nonsense all right. But something tell me it's going to be the strangest nonsense we've ever seen.
Warily, they show their invitations to the mortal ticket taker at the door. He glances away indifferently.
INT THEATRE BOX. NIGHT.
Claudia and Louis look at the crowd as the lights go down.
CLAUDIA Mortals, mortals everywhere. And lots of drops to drink.
LOUIS They are here. I know they are. Listen for something that doesn't make a sound.
Stage: curtain rises. An elaborate painted set of an Italianate castle. Death standing before it, the traditional image of the Grim Reaper, complete with magnificent scythe.
LOUIS (WHISPER) It's a vampire. It's the one I saw in Rue St Jacques.
A version of the Poe story unfolds before them. All of the participants are vampires. All beautiful gleaming white, aged 20 or 30.
LOUIS They use no paint. And the audience think it is paint.
CLAUDIA How devilishly clever.
A spotlight uncovers a mortal woman suddenly forced out upon the stage.
CLAUDIA She's no vampire.
LOUIS No. She's frightened. She doesn't know where she is.
The audience laughts uneasily, then stops as the Mortal Woman comes into the footlights. She is too beautiful, too confused. Santiago, as Death, advances on her. She backs away, terrified, then sees the other vampires, in a phalanx, advancing from behind, in a half-circle.
MORTAL WOMAN I don't want to die!
She looks around in panic. Santiago swoons, arms over his breast as if he is hopelessly in love.
SANTIAGO We are death!
The Mortal Woman steps to the footlights.
MORTAL WOMAN Someone help me. Please... What have I done?
Louis whispers to Claudia.
LOUIS This is no performance.
CLAUDIA And no one knows but us...
ON THE STAGE --
SANTIAGO We all die. Death is the one thing you share with all those here.
Santiago gestures to the audience. AUDIENCE. Rapt faces. ON STAGE:
MORTAL WOMAN But I'm young...
SANTIAGO Death is no respecter of age. He can come any time, any place. Need I tell you what fate has in store for you?
MORTAL WOMAN I would take my chance. Let me go! Please...
SANTIAGO And if you take that chance and live, what is your fate? The humpbacked toothless visage of old age?
Santiago approaches her and tears the drawstring out of her peasant blouse. It opens completely and starts to slip. She tries to catch it, but gently stops her wrists. The blouse falls, exposing her young breasts. LOUIS AND CLAUDIA:
LOUIS This is monstrous!
CLAUDIA Yes, and very beautiful.
ON STAGE
SANTIAGO Just as this flesh is pink now, it will turn grey and wrinkle with age.
WOMAN Let me live, please. I don't care.
SANTIAGO Then why should you care if you die now?
She shakes her head, confused. he catches her wrists behind her back. AUDIENCE is awestruck by her beauty, her suffereing.
SANTIAGO draws near her cheek.
SANTIAGO And suppose death had a heart to love and to release you? To whom would he turn his passion? Would you pick a person from the crowd there? A person to suffer as you suffer?
AUDIENCE: A young girl cries out in jest.
YOUNG GIRL Oh, yes, take me Monsier Vampire! I adore you!
Audience roars with laughter.
ONSTAGE
SANTIAGO You wait your turn.
The AUDIENCE laughs again. The Mortal Woman shakes her head in panic.
SANTIAGO Well, have you a sister, a mother, a daughter you would send in your place?
CLOSE ON CLAUDIA. Even she is repelled by the cruelty. She shakes her head. MORTAL WOMAN: Shakes her head. She is helpless.
SANTIAGO We alone can give death meaning. Do you know what it means to be loved by death, to become our bride?
MORTAL WOMAN looks up on the verge of hysteria or fainting. But then her eyes mist over. She is being entranced. FROM HER POV we realise she is looking past Santiago at the divinely beautiful Armand, who has just stepped out of the wings. Armand has entranced her. He passes Santiago. Santiago stiffens, but yields the stage.
ARMAND No pain.
MORTAL WOMAN No pain?
ARMAND takes her by the nakes shoulders.
ARMAND Your beauty is a gift to us.
ON STAGE: Armand gestures to the others who slowly, gracefully close in.
ARMAND Who deserves such a gift?
He pulls the drawstring from her skirt and it falls revealing her nakedness. But she is spellbound.
MORTAL WOMAN No pain...
Armand embraces her, drinks, her naked body stark against her black clothes, then he passes her to the other vampires one by one. CLOSE ON LOUIS who battles desire and hunger with anger.
LOUIS I've seen enough of this! I loathe it!
CLAUDIA Be still!
ON STAGE: The naked Mortal Woman lies dead on the floor. The vampires seem to vanish one by one. As the curtain draws across, the Audience loudly applauds what they presume are theatrical tricks. ANOTHER ANGLE: The audience, milling towards the exits. They talk in vacuous terms about the beauty of the show, the symbolism of it, the daring of it as they leave. Gradually Louis and Claudia are left alone in the empty theatre. Louis seems anxious to leave. Claudia whispers in his ear.
CLAUDIA Patience, Louis. Patience.
He looks around the empty theatre, more eery now than when the play was on. The red curtain shifts slightly in a hidden breeze, a candle sputters and dies in a box. Then the candle flares again, and we see Armand in the box, looking down on them. He stares with a dreamy expression, saying nothing.
LOUIS We've been searching for you for a very long time...
His voice echoes eerily. Armand gestures for them to follow him.
INT. FOOT OF STAIRWAY.
Armand leading, Louis and Claudia following. It opens into a -- HUGE UNDERGROUND BALLROOM. Walls are painted with famous copies of Durer, Brueghel, Goya and Bosch depictions of death. Fine wooden coffins line the walls. Candles burn in sconces, casting alternate shawdows and pools of light. Armand walks through, gesturing Louis and Claudia to follow him. As they walk through, vampire man and women appear out of the shadows like wraiths, startling them, drifting around them, stroking them, touching Claudia as if she were a doll. Shrieks of preternatural laughter. Armand gestures to the vampires to back off. All obey but ESTELLE.
ESTELLE Such a darling.
She menaces Claudia, her breasts enormous, her fangs bared. Armand throws her a look, and she is flung against the wall. Louis stares around. The vampires faces drift towards him and away, always disclosing the face of Armand, who seems some distance away, but strangely close, staring at Louis with a constantly calm, hypnotic gaze. Then a young mortal boy comes from the shadows with a candleabra, which he hands to Armand. Armand and the boy come towards them, leading them along the walls, his candleabra illuminating the ghastly murals, his face gleaming like an angel above the candleflame.
LOUIS Monstrous.
ARMAND Yes, and very beautiful.
LOUIS Your lips, they didn't move.
ARMAND They did, but too fast for you to see them. No magic, just grace and speed.
The boy is watching Louis. Armand's hand beckons and the boy draws up to Louis in the candlelight. He places his arms on Louis' shoulders. Louis glances at Armand, who smiles. Louis sees the puncture marks on the boy's neck.
ARMAND He wants you...
Louis is utterly confused. Can't resist. Drinks his blood. The boy's body presses against him, sensual, willing. The other vampires appear all around Louis, who suddenly senses it and draws away, ashamed. Claudia watches warily, from a distance. Armand beckons at her and Louis and open a door in the wall which reveals a stone staircase.
INT. MEDIEVAL ROOM.
Medieval chairs, table, an old coffin, a bed in one corner, a blazing fire. A medieval painting of Satan, being banished from heaven, above the fire. Armand places the boy on the bed, settling him so he sleeps.
ARMAND Disappointing, isn't it? To come so far and find so little. Jaded ingenues, amusing themselves with make- believe...
LOUIS We had feared we were the only ones...
ARMAND But how did you come into existence?
He glances at Louis, then at Claudia, who averts her eyes.
ARMAND You don't want to answer... Two vampires from the new world, come to guide us into the new era as all we love slowly rots and fades away.
LOUIS Are you the leader of tis group?
ARMAND If there were a leader, I would be the one.
Claudia stares at him constantly, guarded.
LOUIS So you have the answers...
ARMAND Ah! You have questions?
LOUIS What are we?
ARMAND Nothing if not vampires...
LOUIS Who made us what we are?
ARMAND Surely you know the one who made you...
LOUIS But the one who made him, who made the one who made him, the source of all this evil...
Louis looks at the picture. Armand watches him.
ARMAND That is a picture, nothing more.
LOUIS You mean we are not children of Satan?
ARMAND No.
He smiles at Louis. A smile of infinite compassion.
ARMAND I understand. I saw you in the theatre, your suffering, your sympathy for that girl. I saw you with the boy. You die when you kill, you feel you deserve to die and you stint on nothing. But does that make you evil? Or, since you comprehend what you call goodness, does it not make you good?
LOUIS Then there is nothing.
ARMAND Perhaps...
He passes his finger through the candle flame.
ARMAND And perhaps this is the only real evil left...
LOUIS Then God does not exist...
ARMAND I have not spoken to him...
LOUIS And no vampire here has discourse with God or the Devil?
ARMAND None that I've ever known. I know nothing of God or the Devil, I have never seen a vision nor learnt a secret that would damn or save my soul. And as far as I know, after four hundred years I am the oldest living vampire in the world.
He stares at them, his face angelic, hypnotic, young. His eyes hold them both in a trance.
LOUIS My God... So it's as I always feared. Nothing, leading to nothing.
ARMAND You fell too much. So much you make me feel...
He stares from Claudia to Louis. He seems to be reading their souls.
ARMAND The one who made you should have told you this. The one who left the old world for the new...
LOUIS He knew nothing. He just didn't care.
ARMAND Knew? You mean he is...
Claudia appears suddenly to Louis' shoulder, interrupting.
CLAUDIA Come, beloved. It's time we were on our way. I'm hungry and the city waits.
She stares hard at Armand. Armand looks from her to Louis.
ARMAND So soon to go?
He seems genuinely regretful. But Claudia pulls Louis out.
INT. DARKENED CORRIDORS AND THEATRE. NIGHT.
Louis and Claudia feel their way through darkened corridors, trying to find their way out.
LOUIS (VO) The place was dark as we left, a darkness that confounded even Claudia. And as we blundered through it, again came the thought: I have wronged Lestat, I have hated him for the wrong reasons. Suddenly a light comes on. They see they are in the empty theatre. Santiago stands on the stage, under a candle.
SANTIAGO How did you wrong him?
Louis is stunned.
LOUIS You read my thoughts?
SANTIAGO You said a name -
LOUIS A name I don't want to say again.
SANTIAGO I seemed to recongise it...
Other vampires appear behind him.
SANTIAGO There is but one crime among us vampires here.
He looks at Claudia.
SANTIAGO You should know, who are so secretive about the vampire who made you.
Claudia laughs.
CLAUDIA Boredom!
SANTIAGO It is the crime that means death to any vampire. To kill your own kind!
CLAUDIA Aaaah! I was so afraid it was to be born like Venus out of the foam, as we were! Come Louis, let's go!
EXT. HOTEL SAINT GABRIEL. NIGHT.
Claudia and Louis enter the Lobby.
CLAUDIA I lothe them! I can't stand the sight of them! Stupid bourgeois Parisians, all dressed in black like some private club! I've searched for them the world over and I despise them!
LOUIS What danger?
CLAUDIA I can feel it from them! They want to know who made us, what became of him. They have their rules, their idiotic rules!
They come to their room, enter.
INT. HOTEL ROOMS. NIGHT.
Louis closes the door behind him. Claudia paces.
LOUIS Do you think I would let them harm you?
CLAUDIA No, you would not, Louis. Danger holds you to me.
LOUIS Love holds you to me. And we are in danger, not you.
CLAUDIA Love?
She smiles at him. A strange, sad, adult smile.
CLAUDIA You would leave me for Armand if he beckoned you.
LOUIS Never.
CLAUDIA He wants you as you want him. He's been waiting for you. He wants you for a companion. He bides his time that place. He finds them as dull and lifeless as we do.
LOUIS That's not so.
CLAUDIA Do you know what his soul said to me without saying a word? When he put me in that trance...
LOUIS So you felt it too!
CLAUDIA Let him go, he said. Let him go.
She touches his face.
CLAUDIA Is that what I should do Louis? Let you go? My father? My lover? My Louis, who made me?
There are tears in her eyes. Louis lifts her up in his arms.
LOUIS He can protect us, Claudia.
CLAUDIA You really believe that?
EXT. DOLL-SHIP. NIGHT.
Claudia, staring at the dolls. We see Madeleine inside, painting a doll. She sees Claudia and smiles and waves.
INT. THEATRE. NIGHT.
Louis, sitting alone in the box, as the curtains draw back, to show Santiago as death, as before. Louis takes advantage of the darkness to slip away.
INT. ARMAND'S ROOM. NIGHT.
Armand opens the door to Louis' knock.
ARMAND I was waiting for you...
LOUIS Listen to me.
He follows Armand into the room.
LOUIS Claudia is dear to me. My... daughter.
ARMAND Your lover.
LOUIS No, my beloved, my child.
ARMAND If you say so. You are innocent.
LOUIS I'm not innocent. But I'm afraid. She feels she's in danger from the others.
ARMAND She is.
LOUIS But why?
ARMAND I could give you reasons. Her silence. Her youth. It's forbidden to make so young, so helpless, that cannot survive on its own.
LOUIS Then blame the one who made her...
ARMAND Did you kill this vampire who made you both? Is that why you won't say his name? Santiago thinks you did.
LOUIS We want no quarrel with him.
ARMAND It's already begun. If you want to save her, send her away.
LOUIS Then I leave too.
Armand smiles.
ARMAND So soon? Without any of those answers you so longed for?
LOUIS You said there were none.
ARMAND But you asked the wrong questions. Do you know how few vampires have the stamina for immortality? How quickly they perish of their own will.
LOUIS We can do that?
ARMAND You would never give up life. If the world were reduced to one empty cell, on fragile candle, you stay alive and study it. You see too clearly. You see too much.
LOUIS That's what the one who made me said.
ARMAND How he must have loved you.
Armand suddenly grips Louis close to him.
ARMAND Louis, I need you more than he ever did. I need a link with this century. The world changes. We do not. Therein lies the irony that ultimately kills us. I need you to make contact with this age.
Louis laughs bitterly.
LOUIS He? Don't you see? I'm not the spirit of any age! I'm at odds with everything and always have been! I'm not even sure what I am!
Armand smiles.
ARMAND But Louis, that is the very spirit of your age. The heart of it. Your fall from grace has been the fall of a century.
Louis is stunned.
LOUIS And the vampires of the Theatre?
ARMAND Like moths around the candle of the age. Decadent, useless. They can't reflect anything. But you do. You reflect its broken heart.
Louis is speechless.
ARMAND Are these not the answers you came for?
LOUIS (SOFTLY) Yes... My God...
ARMAND A vampire with a human soul. An immortal with a mortal's passion. You are beautiful, my friend. Lestat must have wept when he made you --
LOUIS Lestat! You knew Lestat!
ARMAND Yes I knew him. Knew him well enough not to mourn his passing.
Armand stands. He takes Louis by the arm, leads him towards the back wall.
ARMAND But you must go now. You must get her safely out of Paris.
He opens a hidden door in the wall.
ARMAND No-one else knows of this door. When you knock you will find me waiting...
EXT. THEATRE DES VAMPIRES. NIGHT.
Louis, in the street outside, as the door closes behind him.
LOUIS (VO) I feld a kind of peace at last. I had found the teacher which Lestat could never, I knew now, have been. I knew knowledge would never be withheld by Armand. It would pass through him as through a pane of glass. And I knew Claudia must leave me...
INT. HOTEL SUITE. NIGHT.
Louis enters. There is unfamiliar scent in the air, a doll sitting by the mirror. Louis looks in the mirror and sees -- MADELEINE, the doll-maker, resplendent in green taffeta, sitting like a Madonna with Claudia on her lap. Claudia's arms are wound round her neck. The contrast between mortal woman and immortal child is plain.
CLAUDIA Madeleine... Louis is shy.
Madeleine rises and comes towards Louis. She draws back the lace fringes round her throat, so he can see the two marks there. She says softly, dreamily.
MADELEINE Drink.
Louis turns away. Claudia speaks, icy, from the bed.
CLAUDIA Do it Louis. Because I cannot do it. I haven't the strength. You saw to that when you made me.
Louis turns to Madeleine.
LOUIS You haven't the vaguest conception under God of what you ask!
MADELEINE Au contraire, monsieur, I have.
Louis pushes her away. Claudia screams.
CLAUDIA You have found your new companion, Louis! You will make me mine!
Louis grips Madeleine and shakes her.
LOUIS How do we seem to you? Do you think us beautiful, magical, our white skin, our fierce eyes? Drink, you ask me! Have you any idea of the thing you will become?
CLAUDIA Your evil is that you cannot be evil! And I will suffer for it no longer!
LOUIS Don't make me, Claudia! I cannot do it!
CLAUDIA Yet you could do it to me! Snatching me from my mother's hands like two monsters in a fairy-tale! Couldn't you have waited? Six more years and I would have had that shape! And now you weep! You haven't tears enough for what you've done to me.
She points to Madeleine
CLAUDIA You give her to me! Do this before you leave me!
She begins to weep, sobbing like a child.
CLAUDIA Oh God! I love you still, that's the torment of it. But you know I must leave you Louis...
LOUIS Yes...
CLAUDIA And who will care for me my love, my dark angel, when you are gone?
Louis looks at Madeleine
LOUIS You promise to care for her then?
MADELEINE Yes...
LOUIS And you know what you ask for?
She wraps her arms around Claudia.
MADELEINE Yes.
LOUIS What do you think she is, Madeleine? A doll?
MADELEINE A child who can't die...
Her finger clutches a locket around her neck, Louis touches it, opens it. THE LOCKET -- A picture of a young girl, Claudia's age, wistful, beautiful.
LOUIS (SOFTLY) And the child who did die?
MADELEINE My daughter...
Louis takes her chin in his hand, gently.
LOUIS Look at the gaslight. Don't tke your eyes off it. You will be drained to the point of death, but you must stay alive. Do you hear me?
MADELEINE Yes!
Louis pulls her to him and starts to drink her blood.
EXT. HOTEL BALCONY. LATER.
Louis on the balcony, weakened terribly. A breeze blows on the gauze curtains behind him, through which we see -- SILHOUETTES of Madeleine and Claudia. Madeleine her arms outstretched, now a vampire, a long moan of pain coming from her. Claudia comes through the curtains, alarmed.
CLAUDIA (WHISPER) Louis!
Louis speaks without turning.
LOUIS She is dying. It happened to you too, but your child's mind can't remember.
CLAUDIA But if she dies...
LOUIS It's only mortal death.
He turns to look at Claudia.
LOUIS Bear me no ill will, my love. We are now even.
CLAUDIA What do you mean?
LOUIS What died tonight inside that room was not that woman. It will take her many nights to die, perhaps yeaars. What has died in that room tonight is the last vestige in me of what was human.
She takes his hand.
CLAUDIA Yes father. At last. We are even.
He bends down and kisses her. He looks up, at the wafting curtains. He sees -- MANY VAMPIRE SHADOWS Silhouetted, coming closer. CLAUDIA Looks up and sreams. THE CURTAINS are ripped aside. The vampires of the Theatre surge through.
ESTELLE Time for justice, little one.
The vampires close on them as Louis struggles, Claudia's scream pierces the night air.
INT. CORRIDOR OF THEATRE DES VAMPIRES. NIGHT.
In a press of vampires, Louis, Claudia and Madeleine are forced down the dark corridor. Into - THE BALLROOM. Vampire chaos, as they are dragged through. Louis struggling like a demon.
LOUIS Armand! Get me Armand! he wouldn't countenance this -
SANTIAGO You can make no demands here! Buffoon! Bastard -
Santiago strikes Louis to the ground. As he struggles to his feet, he sees the vampires part around a figure coming through. He gasps at the sight of -- LESTAT Dressed beautifully, but horribly scarred now, from the fire as well as the earlier stabbing. Lestat is confused, ancient, teetering, reaching for Santiago's shoulder to steady himself.
LESTAT Louis...
SANTIAGO Is he the one?
Lestat shakes his head.
LESTAT No, the child. The child was the one...
SANTIAGO All the murderers!!!
LOUIS You are alive, Lestat! It can't be murder! Tell them how you treated us...
Lestat reaches out to Louis.
LESTAT No... You come back to me Louis...
LOUIS Are you mad????
ESTELLE The sentence is death! To all of them!!!
LESTAT Only the girl - it was the girl -
The sound of something being dragged through the crowd. Horrible echoing, scraping - Lestat grips Santiago.
LESTAT You promised me - I could take him back to New Orleans - Louis - there's something I must tell you - about that night - that night I met you -
He stares around him, confused. The scraping gets louder.
LOUIS You let her go, Lestat - you let her free - and I'll come back with you -
Santiago grabs Louis by the neck.
SANTIAGO Death for the others. For you eternity in a box -
We see now what caused the scraping. A huge metal coffin being dragged through the vampires. Claudia screams.
SANTIAGO Walled in a dungeon. Your only company will be your screams... Perhaps it will take centuries...
The vampires grap Louis. They force him towards the coffin. Lestat struggles with them.
LESTAT He's coming home with me - you promised -
SANTIAGO (LAUGHING) We promised nothing!
Louis struggles fiercely as he is forced into the coffin. Claudia weeps.
LOUIS They've fooled you, Lestat! You must reach Armand! Armand has the power!
Louis, struggling in the coffin. Then the lid is forced down, huge locks closed over it.
INT. COFFIN.
Louis, in the smallest imaginable space. Beating his forehead against the metal.
EXT. COFFIN.
Claudia, throwing herself on the coffin, crying. She is dragged away. Vampire hands drag the coffin across the stone floor.
INT. COFFIN.
Louis, forehead pouring with blood, being thrown this way and that. The coffin is liften, upside down, Louis' head crases off the floor.
EXT. COFFIN.
Is thrust into a niche in the wall. Bricks being placed over, mortar trowelled on.
INT. COFFIN.
Louis upside down. Sounds of bricks and mortar. Then terrifying, unearthly scream pierces the coffin, striking to his very soul.
LOUIS Claudia!!!!!
He loses consciousness.
BLACKNESS.
INT COFFIN.
Louis sleeps, upside down. Sound of bricks being broken, thrown aside. Then of locks breaking. Louis opens his eyes. The lid opens. He sees - ARMAND - above him, reaching down to take his hand.
ARMAND Hurry. Don't make a sound.
Louis gets out, into a vast long catacomb. Louis runs to the end of it, steps through a broken brick wall.
LOUIS Where is she? Where's Claudia?
ARMAND Follow me - that way - through my cell -
He points to his cell at the end of the passage, the foot of the steps. Sound of rain beyond the door.
LOUIS Not without Claudia. Where is she?
ARMAND I can't save her.
LOUIS You can't believe I'd leave without her. Armand! You must save her! You have no choice.
ARMAND Louis, I can't save her. I will only risk losing you -
Louis runs up the stone stairs. It leads to the ballroom. He enters. Estelle stands far off, looking at him coolly. She lifts the stage skull mask and laughs softly behind it. A male vampire slumps in a chair staring softly at Louis. Silence. Indifference. Louis sees Lestat sitting in a far corner. he rushes up to Lestat, who looks up at him, confused. He's holding something crumpled, made of cloth.
LESTAT You'll come home with me Louis? Fro a little while... until I am myself again.
LOUIS CLAUDIA!!!
Louis turns round and round in rage. Passive still faces. A door bangs open and shut. Louis looks again at Lestat. He snatches the cloth from Lestat's hand. We see it is a small torn bloodstained dress. Claudia's dress. The door bangs again. Estelle laughs. Rain gusts into the ballroom. Louis goes to the door, holding the dress. Armand approaches, trying to pull him away, but Louis shrugs him off. He draws nearer and nearer and stairs at --
INT. BRICK AIRWELL
On the stones lie Claudia and Madeleine, burn to ashes, in each other's arms, like the corpses of his wife and daughter in the New Orleans graveyard, embracing each other. Only Claudia's blond hair and Madeleine's red hair remain unburnt. Louis looks up at the walls of this airwell, many stories to the sky. He cries out in agony. Santiago appears behind him, staring. Louis roars in horror and attacks Santiago, scattering the ashes into the rainy wind. Claudia's golden locks fly up into the wind, they whirl around the warring figure. Armand appears, drags Louis free, pulls him screaming from the airwell, into the ballroom, towards the exit. Claudia's hair is sucked up by the wind through the airwell, towards the night sky.
EXT. NOTRE DAME DOOR. NIGHT.
Louis is slumped against the stone wall. Armand stands beside him like a guardian angel.
ARMAND I couldn't prevent it.
LOUIS I don't believe you. I do not have to read your soul to know that you lie.
ARMAND Louis, they cannot be brought back. There are some things that are impossible, even for me.
LOUIS You let them do it.
Louis climbs to his feet.
LOUIS You held sway over them. They feared you. You wanted it to happen.
ARMAND Louis, I swear I did not.
LOUIS I understand you only too well. You let them do it, as I let Lestat turn a child into a demon. As I let her rip Lestat's heart to pieces! Well I am no longer that passive fool that has spun evil from evil till the web traps the one who made it. Your melancholy spirit of this century! I know what I must do. And I warn you - you saved me tonight, so I return the favour - do not go near your cell in the Theatre Des Vampires again.
EXT. THEATRE DES VAMPIRES. DAWN.
Wet and deserted, the streets around the theatre are quiet.
C/U CLOCK: chiming five am. CLOSE ON LOUIS: lookin at the paling sky. He is in an alleyway, outside of Armand's cell. He has a huge keg with him. he finds the door unlocked. He enters.
INT. CELL.
Empty. The hearth is cold. The old coffin is gone. Louis silently closes the door to the passage and blocks it with an immense bar. He goes in the other door.
INT. THEATRE
Louis hurls kerosene all over the stage, the curtain, the sets, the seats below. He grabs the scythe from the playlet. He walks out. Dribbling a trail of kerosene behind him.
INT. STAIRS.
Louis walking rapidly down, leaving the trail of kerosene. He creeps quietly into the -- BALLROOM -- leaking kerosene from the cask. He splashes over the coffins that gleam in the dimness. Then he strikes a match and heaves it into the kerosene. Everything bursts into flame. The trail of kerosene roars into fire through the ballroom over the coffins and up the stairs. We hear EXPLOSIONS of fire from above. LOUIS shudders all over, fighting the morning weakness. He readies the scythe, like the grim reaper. ESTELLE rises from her burning coffin, screams and tries to run through the fire but Louis slashes her down with the scythe and she goes down screaming, her dress in flames.
ESTELLE Stop him. It's morning. The sunlight. Stop him.
Others rise, choking in the smoke. Screams from everywhere. They are burning. Louis backs up the stairs to the -- DUNGEON. He can see there a thin pale light under Armand's bolted door. Suddenly -- SANTIAGO comes at him from behind. Louis turns. Santiago rushes him in a blur. Louis swings the scythe, too fast to see what he himself is doing. Santiago's head streaming blood flies through the air. The body drops, flapping its arms. SCREAMS come from everywhere. Another vampire rushes burning towards Louis. He decapitates him in turn. Then he staggers into Armand's cell, and bars the door the connects it to the ballroom behind him. He staggers to the outer door. There is a thin strip of daylight, beneath the door, blinding him. He throws it open, and staggers into the daylight.
EXT. THEATRE DES VAMPIRES. DAWN.
Louis staggers out of the burning theatre, into the thin daylight. Great gusts of smoke cover the street. He staggers through the daylight, weakening, about to fall, when through the clouds of smoke comes - A MAGNIFICENT HEARSE - as in a dream, driven by Armand's human boy. The door of the hearse opens. Through the curtains enclosing the interior, we see Armand. He reaches a hand out to Louis and pulls him inside. The hearse vanishes through the smoke, leaving the spectacle of the burning theatre.
EXT. THEATRE DES VAMPIRES. TWILIGHT.
The gutted Theatre and ballroom, the roof collapsed, exposed to the evening sky. The life of Paris goes on around it, oblivious.
INT. LOUVRE. NIGHTS LATER.
It is already a museum by this time and Louis and Armand, fancily dressed and composed, walk through it. They stop by a Gericault - The Wreck of the Medusa.
LOUIS You didn't even warm them, did you?
ARMAND No.
LOUIS And yet you knew what I would o.
ARMAND I knew. I rescued you, didn't I? From the terrible dawn.
LOUIS You were their leader. They trusted you.
ARMAND You made me see their failings, Louis. You made me look at them with your eyes.
He looks at Louis affectionately.
ARMAND Your melancholy eyes...
LOUIS What a pair we are. We deserve each other, don't we?
ARMAND We are a pair, and that's what counts.
Armand and Louis walk slowly through the Louvre together. Camera follows them for a while, then comes to rest on a sunrise by Turner.
LOUIS (VO) We left Paris shortly after. For years we wandered. Greece, Egypt, all the ancient lands. Then, out of curiosity, perhaps, boredom, who knows what, I took him home, to my America...
INT. MOVIE THEATRE. NIGHT.
A deco cinema of the twenties. Louis and Armand, dressed in the style of the period walk down the aisle through the crowded seats.
LOUIS (VO) And there, a technological wonder allowed me see sunrise, for the first time in two hundred years...
On the screen, Murnau's SUNRISE, in black and white. We see a montage of sunrises, from a whole range of movies, in black and white.
LOUIS (VO) And what sunrises! Seen as the human eye could never see them. We would sit in the dark, night after night among nameless humans, entranced with the miracle of light. Silver at first, then as the years progressed in tones of purple, red and my long-lost blue...
The SUNRISES continue, in colour now, and the backgrounds in them change to the fifties.
LOUIS (VO) And in time parted. We had become so alike, we both wanted the certainties of loneliness once more. The lights come up in a different theatre. Louis sitting there, alone, in a half empty theatre, dressed in the clothes of the fifties. He rises, exits with the others.
EXT. NEW ORLEANS STREET. NIGHT.
Cars rushing by, twentieth-century madness. Louis emerges from the theatre, walks through the streets.
LOUIS (VO) I had returned to new Orleans. As soon as I smelt the air, I knew I was home. There was sadness there, rich, almost sweet, like the fragrance of jasmine. I walked the streets, savouring it like a long lost perfume...
EXT. GARDEN DISTRICT. NIGHT.
Louis walks past the many Greek Revival Mansions.
LOUIS (VO) And then on Prytania Street, only blocks from the Lafayette cemetery I caught the scent of death and it wasn't coming from the graves...
CAMERA PANS OVER white-walled Lafayette cemetery and its surrounding mansions.
LOUIS (VO) The scent grew stronger as I walked. Old death. A scent too faint for mortals to detect.
Louis sees rats darting across the street. They rush into a great overgrown garden surrounding a ruined mansion. No lights. Louis stops at a rusted gate. He forces it open and enters -- A VERITABLE JUNGLE of overgrown rose and oak tree and wisteria, he sees a faint glimmer of light coming from a distant glass window of a huge Greek Revival house. He approaches then he sees -- OLD SHRIVELLED CORPSE of a man, long dead and dried up, snagged in the thorny rosevines. LOUIS looks around. Walks on. Sees another corpse, almost nothing but bones, sinking into the wet earth, the roots of an oak overgrowing it. He looks up at the distant light. He passes a third corpse, caught in wisteria and rose vine, only bones and clothes.
LOUIS (VO) They were like the doomed princess caught in the thorny vines of Sleeping Beauty's castle. I knew what it meant. A vampire had lured them here, but had benn to weak to get rid of them.
Louis sees dead rats lying near the steps.
LOUIS (VO) It spelt weakness, madness, the behavior of a dying animal that pollutes its own lair.
Louis treads carefully on the rotted steps. he moves along the porch. More dead rats. He sees through the floor-length window into rooms lined with stacked books. Virtually walled with them. Water seeps down from the ceiling, gleaming as it streaks over the books. The floors of the splendid rooms are bare, except for a rotten French chair by a dead fireplace. A single mirror reflecting the moon. Dead rats. He moves along the porch to the parlour windows. The candle flickers inside. He sees -- HIS POV -- Lestat lying on the floor. He is gaunt to near starvation. All his scars are gone, but he is almost a skeleton and his eyes are enormous in their sockets. His clothes are rags. Blond hair beautiful, as always.
MALLOY'S ENTRANCED FACE SUPERIMPOSED OVER
MALLOY (VO) Lestat escaped the fire!
LOUIS (VO) He hadn't even been there. And all those years I thought he was dead.
BACK TO -- Lestat. One tiny candle stands beside him. He reads an early comic, from the turn of the century. Without turning his head, he speaks.
LESTAT I'm so glad you're here Louis... I've dreamed of your coming...
LOUIS Don't try to speak... it's alright...
LESTAT I didn't mean to let them do it... that Santiago, he tricked me...
LOUIS That's all past, Lestat.
LESTAT Yes. Past... she should never have been one of us...
He turns and looks at Louis. Old, fearful, broken.
LESTAT Still beautiful Louis. You always were the strong one.
LOUIS Don't fear me, Lestat. I bring you no harm.
LESTAT You've come back to me, Louis? You've come again to me?
Louis shakes his head. A series of police sirens go by, piercing the night sky. A helicopter goes overhead. Red flashes illuminate his face. Lestat shivers, covers his ears. He's terrified. Louis touches him, calming him, until the lights pass over.
LOUIS It's only a siren...
LESTAT I can't bear it Louis! The machines out there, that fly and that roar! And such lights! They make the night brighter than the day!
LOUIS And they frighten you?
LESTAT You know I love the dark. But there's no dark anymore.
LOUIS It's false light, Lestat. It can't harm you...
LESTAT If you stayed with me Louis, I could venture out... little by little... become the old Lestat.
Louis shivers. He releases him.
LOUIS I have to go now Lestat...
LESTAT You remember how I was, Louis.. the vampire Lestat...
LOUIS Yes. I remember...
Lestat shivers.
LESTAT I tried to tell you Louis... that night in Paris... when I first came to you... no-one can refuse the dark gift, Louis... not even you.
LOUIS I tried...
LESTAT And the more you tried, the more I wanted you... a vampire with your beautiful, suffering human heart. And how you suffered... I need your forgiveness, Louis.
LOUIS You have it...
Louis walks slowly away from him. Lestat turns back to his candle, his magazine.
LESTAT You'll come back, Louis... take me out... little by little... and maybe I'll be myself again...
A bluebottle buzzes by him. His hand shoots out and grabs it, squeezes the blood.
LOUIS (WHISPERING) Yes, Lestat...
ON LOUIS as he walks through the decayed house. His eyes are expressionless.
LOUIS (VO) And my story ends there. But in fact it ended a long time ago, with Claudia's ashes in that theatre. My love died with her. I never really changed after that. What became of Lestat I have no idea. I go on, night after night. I feed on those who cross my path. But all my passion went with her yellow hair. I am a spirit with perternatural flesh. Detached. unchangeable. Empty.
INT. ROOM. SAN FRANCISCO. NIGHT. (PRESENT)
Malloy, staring at Louis.
MALLOY No... it can't end like that...
LOUIS But it has. There is no more to tell.
MALLOY But you talk about passion, about longing, about things I'll never know in my life! It's still inside you, in every syllable you speak! And then you tell me it ends like that? Just empty?
LOUIS It's over, I'm telling you...
MALLOY You need a new passion, Louis, a new reason to feel... what a story you've told, you don't understand yourself.
Louis looks at the cassettes on the table.
LOUIS Do what you want with it. Learn what you can. Give the story to others.
Malloy rises.
MALLOY You have another chance, Louis. Take me! Give me your gift, your power...
Louis is slowly horrified, then outraged and angry.
LOUIS Is this what you want? You ask me for this after all I've told you?
MALLOY If I could see what you've seen, feel what you've felt I wouldn't let it end like this! You need a like to the world out there, a connection... then it won't end like this...
He stares at Louis.
MALLOY You need me.
Louis turns away.
LOUIS Dear God. I've failed again, haven't I?
MALLOY No...
LOUIS Don't say anymore. The reels are still turning. I have but one chance to show you the meaning of what I've said.
He looks at the boy. Then suddenly grabs him, lifts him off the floor, bares his terrifying fangs and brings them to his throat. Malloy screams, in involuntary terror.
LOUIS You like it? You like being food for the immortals? You like dying? Is it beautiful? Is it intense?
Malloy, now terrified, whispers
MALLOY No... please...
Louis drops him.
LOUIS Thank God.
Malloy, falls on the floor, terrified. When he looks up, Louis has vanished.
MALLOY Louis... Louis...
He looks up at the tape. It is still turning.
MALLOY Holy shit...
He shakes his head. He gets up, and with shaking fingers gathers his tapes. He runs out of the room.
EXT. STREET OUTSIDE. NIGHT.
Malloy running for his car, a convertible. He leaps in and screeches off through the night.
EXT. STREETS. NIGHT.
Malloy whips the car through the tiny streets, in sheer, unfocused terror.
MALLOY Jesus...
EXT. GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE. NIGHT.
Malloy driving with streams of traffic over the bridge. He breathes deeply, to calm himself. He takes a tape from his pocket, and with still shaking hands, sticks it in the deck.
LOUIS (VO)(TAPE) 1791. That's when it happened. I was twenty-four. Younger then you are now.
Suddenly a bony hand shoots out from the back seat, pulls his neck backwards --
LESTAT sinks his teeth in his neck. MALLOY'S hands on the wheel shaking, shuddering, losing their grip. MALLOY'S eyes bulging, as the life drains out of him. Lestat sucking him like a rat. THE WHEEL swinging free of Malloy's dying hands. THE CAR veers wildly into oncoming traffic. LESTAT drinks regardless A TRUCK coming towards them, about to crush the car. LESTAT'S BONY HAND grabs the wheel, jerks it as he drinks. THE CAR misses the truck by inches. LESTAT throws Malloy to one side, climbs into the front seat. THE TAPE playing
LOUIS (VO) (TAPE) My invitation was open to anyone. Sailors, whores, thieves. But it was a vampire that accepted...
ON LESTAT at the wheel, the corpse of Malloy in the passenger seat. He smiles. We can see the blood renewing him.
LESTAT Dear Louis... will I ever forget?
EXT. GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE. NIGHT.
Lestat drives on, the car a tiny speck against the bridge, the sea, the sky beyond, with the first fingers of light spreading through it.
THE END
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