Ghosteria Volume 2: The Novel: Zircons May Be Mistaken, Tanith Lee [classic fiction txt] 📗

Never my modter, as never have Isuch a one save for unremembern.

My Cwene, Eliseth. My hlady.Forgivn mae I be, but will I not deny.

PART TWO

1

The Scholar

Itwas at Murchester, I recall, that some old duffer who, out of the kindness ofhis arrogant heart, (and fee aside) gave us a lecture on Keats – said lecturenot in fact bad in itself – referred to that “plebeian phrase” which “enthuses”that someone or other is a “diamond”. The old fascist proceeded, (nor did thiseither have much to do with the poet Keats), to instruct us that “among theignorant, that inferior stone, the zircon, may be mistaken for a diamond,” bysuch “morons” as did not “know diamonds very well.” He was rewarded with atepid scatter of laughter, none of it offered by me.

I have a reason for recountingthis daft and spiky little memory, but I’ll come to that.

When once we lost the visions ofthe TV and mental visions of the radio, (the world wide web was already gone,the first to fall in fact), along presently with the lights – a universal poweroutage, (as by then the more recent world was wont to call a power-cutor failure), our imaginations took over. We understood too that civilisation,at least inside the British Islands, had collapsed. Not much of a surprise,under the circumstances. And we were already, naturally, seeing on a regularbasis the Zombie Hordes at our very doors, as it were, if in small numbers.

Elizabeth gives them names, theones who hang around now, while they do. What was it? Ugg and Jug – oh, and Cogand Bog. There are a couple more names I mislay. About ten or thirteen of thethings congregate here presently, I surmise, if rather irregularly. They are ofeither gender, though males seem to predominate.

There was one evening I recallwhen El and I were trying to see if we couldn’t make the lights come on any wayby sheer telekinetic impulse: we could not; it seems there has to be someelectric power capability available to start with, or no dice. But as we were givingup, there came a sharp rapping on the French doors. It was one of the ‘modern’rooms, (added circa 1960), equipped in the recent past with central heating andso on. Now in the pitch black and chill – neither of which any more affected us– she and I beheld a towering Zombie pressed against the glass. Was it aware ofus? We thought not. We were not live flesh – meat. Some people can’t seeghosts, as we all realise, and some can, or they can see certain ghosts,for some perhaps explicable but often unexplained reason. This can work in reversefor ghosts as well. They (we) don’t always see living humans. Coral vowsshe has never seen a non-deceased human since her death. Laurel admitsto having seen few, a then-living Elizabeth in her teenage years being one ofthese. For our Knight, I’m not sure either way. Probably Elizabeth knows histake on things, for she’s normally the only one he truly communicates with, orwho can half-way understand his manner of talking. However, apparently, allof our party can see the Zombies. Why is that? Because they are deadeven if still somewhat animate?

Elizabeth and I, withoutexchanging a word, went forward to the glass doors. We could obviously passstraight through them. But we did not. We stayed our side of the window, andthe Zombie stayed his, (it was indeed the remnant of a man, very tall andbig-bodied, with a bald head and staring greenish eyes). He continued to knock.

Then finally the Zombie drewback, and raised his bulky fist to shatter the glass.

Mindlessly both El and I sprangaway – though to us, of course, it could hardly matter. But something toochecked the Zombie. It gave a strange swimmy squinty leer into the room, and turningsuddenly, blundered off again. When it was about twenty paces away along thedrive, it started a kind of ululating yodel. Now and then they do make sounds,presumably if their vocal chords are still intact. Sometimes they even breathe,or approximate hoarse breathing sounds, although one assumes their hearts no longerbeat, and oxygen is as superfluous to them as to ourselves.

When the creature had blunderedfrom our view, Elizabeth said, “A lot of them are almost intact, aren’t they. Isometimes wonder what it must feel like – or do they feel anything?”

“Residually, one supposes,perhaps their bodies do, or with some of them that happens.”

“I wonder if their memoriesremain, or any fragments of thought. Why else,” she mused, “did it knockon the window?”

“Learned reflex, possibly. Amerely physical reaction. No longer cognitive.”

Then Coral appeared, askinganxiously if the “vile bee-thing” had gone.

Laurel was absent, as sometimesshe is, leading her own lonely unlife elsewhere. The Knight was away, almostcertainly making his nostalgic nightly patrol about the ruinous castle towers.

Tonight, just past midnight,which is usually when one can find all of us in the main body of the house, Imean to gather them together. I have had an idea. I have had it for about sevendays and nights now, and have mulled it over. Part of me has even consideredundertaking an experiment on behalf of this idea, privately and alone. But wefive are a sort of club, aren’t we? A Co-Operative. Which suggests to me Iwould be wrong to go ahead before at least outlining my thought to the rest.

Wemet in the ‘new’ sitting room, which was part of the most modern extras, alargish grey and red space, with small tables and big armchairs – on which, ofcourse, we hardly ever ‘sit’, preferring to perch on the floor. Elizabeth has observedwe manage not to sink through the ground outside, or the floors indoors, or thetreads of the staircases, and says that we accomplish this by some unconsciouseffort of will provided us, perhaps, by a sense of pure logic, and that to siton the floor is therefore less tiresome than to use the furniture. (We find,generally, even when we do make an extra effort and position our etheric selveson, say, a chair, once we take an interest in another matter, even in eachother,