INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE

LOUIS
How could I not? She had to know.

MALLOY
And did you lose her? Did she go?

LOUIS
Where would she have gone? She was a child, and beautiful, heartbreaking merciless child. And I had made her that...

EXT. STREETS. NIGHT.

Louis, walking the streets, shivering.

LOUIS
I walked all night. I walked as I walked years before when my mind swam with guilt at the thought of killing. I found myself at the Cathedral.

A cathedral rising out of the mist, the doors open.

LOUIS
I thought of all the things I had done and couldn't undo. And I longed for one second's peace...

Louis walks towards the doors, inside.

INT. CATHEDRAL. NIGHT.

Louis enters. The dim lights of candles. A sacristan tending the altar, an old woman praying -- otherwise empty.

LOUIS
I had no fear. If anything I longed for something to happen, for the stones to tremble as I entered the foyer.

Louis walking down the nave of the church. He stops by the alter.

LOUIS
I almost genuflected from old habit. I almost prayed.

Louis sits in a pew.

LOUIS
And then it struck me.

Louis' POV - the cross, the statues, the tabernacle.

LOUIS
What if the statues gave an image to nothing? What if I was the supernatural in this cathedral? The only immortal under this roof. And I felt nothing but loneliness. Loneliness to the point of madness.

Suddenly a hand is laid on his shoulder. Louis almost jumps. He turns and sees the face of a grey-haired priest.

PRIEST
You wish to go to confession? I was about to lock up the church.

Louis stares at him, tears in his eyes.

PRIEST
You are troubled, aren't you? Can I help?

LOUIS
It's too late, too late -

PREIST
No, it's never too late. Come...

The priest gestures to the confessional. Louis rises, slowly.

INT. CONFESSIONAL.

Louis, kneeling in the darkness. The hatch slides back.

LOUIS
Bless me father for I have sinned so often and so long, I don't know how to change nor beg for forgiveness.

PRIEST
Son, God is infinite in his capacity to forgive. Tell him from your heart.

LOUIS
Murders, father, death after death. The woman who died two nights ago in Jackson Square, I killed her. And thousands of others before her. I have walked the streets of New Orleans like the Grim reaper. And fed on human life for my own. I am a vampire, father, and have turned the one I love most of all into on too --

The hatch slams down. Louis rises, confused, and the door is flung open, the priest stands there.

PRIEST
Do you know the meaning of sacrilege?

Louis rises. Walks out.

LOUIS
Then there is no mercy.

His face comes into the light. The priest steps back, open-mouthed.

LOUIS
You talk of sacrilege. Why if God exists does he suffer me to exist?

He bares his fangs. The priest runs, screaming. Gets to the bellrope, begins to ring the bell. Louis swoops on him.

LOUIS
Why does he suffer me to live?

Louis takes him, lifting him from the floor, till his feet stop kicking.

INT. FLAT. NIGHT.

Louis enters, slidently, like a corpse. He hears a voice behind him.

CLAUDIA
Locked together in hatred --

He turns, sees her sitting in the darkness. She is wearing a tiny nightgown fo stiched lace and pearls, wierdly adult and seductive. She comes towards him.

CLAUDIA
But I can't hate you Louis.

She sprays perfume over her body as she comes nearer.

CLAUDIA
Is this the aroma of a mortal child?

She whispers.

CLAUDIA
Louis. Lover.

She kisses his cheek.

CLAUDIA
I was mortal to you. You gave me your immortal kiss. You became my mother and my father. And so I'm yours. Forever.

She takes his face in her hands.

CLAUDIA
But now's the time to end it, Louis. Now's the time to leave him.

LOUIS
He'll never let us go.

Claudia smiles.

CLAUDIA
Oh... really?

EXT. DOCKLANDS. NEW ORLEANS. NIGHT.

A sailing ship, by the docks. Louis and Claudia talking to a shipping-clerk.

LOUIS (VO)
So we made plans. She was convinced there were others of our kind in Europe, that they would have the answers Lestat couldn't provide. Lestat whom she now hated, who she thought she could be free of. I doubted, but then she had a suprise in store...

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.