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

If I hadn’t pushed him off, ifthe wall hadn’t momentarily stunned him, if he had been more sober, and I moreself- aware.

The bomb however was eager, andhad greater knowledge than either of us. It swung from the sky like a gigantic black-blazingwing, noiseless – or so thunderous it deafened me. It struck the place where wehad stood, and where by then, laughing, he lay. The street exploded intosplinters of volcanic fire.

It would have been both of us, ifI had given in to myself. But I had not. So it was only him.Why do I, fool thatI am still, reckon if we had been together, screwing into each other againstthe tomb-tissue, that bomb would not – would not – have fallen where it did–?

Before him, never, and after him,never. Not for me. I have never known love of the body. Never fucked. But in myown fashion, I have facilitated murder. If he had never seen me, chances were he would himselfhave made it to a shelter. Or he would have been a street or so away. Or if Ihad remained, and the bomb had dropped, ultimate orgasm. No petite mortbut grosse mort. Death with death.

And until this moment, thismoment – I had wiped it off my mind. But now, now I remember.

(Elizabeth):I know he made it work. The Scholar.

He meant to and he did.

I felt it, how he lungedand leapt and passed inside the body of the Zombie. And became a part of it.Did he then lose himself? I don’t think it was that. Although I don’t know.

Can’t know.

Until I do it too, I won’t.

But I’ll never do that,will I, for God’s sake?

Never.

Alongthe passage I came across Coral, poor little thing, crouching under the windowin her formal Victorian dress. She wasn’t crying, but she turned up to me herterrified little face. Poor kid.

“I saw,” she said. “Through thewindow. The old man sprang – and vanished into the bee-thing. Oh! Oh!”

I would have taken her in myarms, but we can’t, of course. We can’t cuddle or console or embrace or touchor properly weep.

“I saw it, too,” I said to her,as levelly as I could.

I had, you see, hadn’t I, in myown way, inside my ghost’s mind “Do you know, Coral, I think he’ll be fine.”She said nothing, shuddering as she crouched on the floor, holding her own selfin both arms. (I suppose we were always left with that. We can touch ourselves.Or seem to. But really, too, I wonder sometimes if we only believe wecan. An hallucination of the embodiment ripped from us at death...) “I bet,” Isaid, trying not to sound too confident, which I was not at all, anyway, “I betour librarian will make it right. Let’s hope so. Then he can give the horriblething a bath, and make it start to talk again, and then he can tell us, throughits mouth, if this was a good idea, or a bad one.”

Coral stared at me.

She said, wary and cold, “Will youdo it, too? Try to go inside one of them?”

“Certainly not, darling,” I said.“Yuk.”

She smiled warily when I said “Yuk”.She’s always seemed to like that dopey but so-descriptive word. I’d hoped she’dsmile. And I smiled too. I said, “Let’s go and see if we can find the others.”

Inwardly, obviously, I wasn’tsmiling.

My mind was still rushing afterthe Scholar, what he had done, its unmatched sequels –

Because of course I knew thislady, me, was protesting too much. If that old gent could do it, Elizabeth was goingto do it too. It was the only chance.

And the very thought of that mademe, as our American friends, with their often perfect use of language, used tosay: sick to my stomach.

(Laurel):It seems the arm of the creature had been broken – or the bone dislocated. Theabrupt gesture it had just now made of wiping off spittle – because thelibrarian made it – must have snapped the bone back into place. The cleverlibrarian told us this presently, the Knight and I, and by then, although thenew mouth he used still somewhat slurred the words, I could understand everythinghe said. It was even rather like his voice, as we knew it from his ghost, onlyslightly altered by the other’s throat. For of course he spoke through thecreature. Except, it seems, it’s not a creature now. It is re-becoming a man,becoming the librarian. But there was some mood too that suddenly came over theold man next, and he turned from us and limped – then walked, a little way off.He stood by a tree, or he made the body do so, and he inside it. He was abletherefore to lean on the tree, which also, in a while, he told us was pleasantto do. He didn’t tell us what the mood of trouble had been, apart from the painin his arm. Perhaps the mood was from some memory of his previous life, thelife before he became a ghost, started all at once by becoming flesh again. Buttears ran down his face. I saw them in the glassy clarity of the starlight, andthey glistened, and were so wet.

Ihave seen her in a glade. As the Scholar did, I think, I looked for and foundher before my mind was completely made up. I’d been watching, yet partly notaware what I was at. How we hide things, both ghosts and the living, from ourown selves!

Morning was coming, the sky colouredlike the pale white wine I’ve seen in fine crystal goblets in this very house,so very long ago. And there she sat. There’s a tiny thread of fresh water thatcomes there out of a rock into a pool. The pool is full of rotted fallen leavesand less natural mess, but the rill is pure. I don’t remember such a waterfall inmy own past. They must have found it since. But it’s always possible, it seems,to find, and to refind. It falls like clean tears. It’s wet. And here then Imay, if I achieve entry into her thin little body, and take