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

off, and radios and TVs too. (Fairly predictably, we seldomattempted much else. Unable, nor needing, to eat or drink, get warm or cooldown, bathe, or wash our garments, the relevant adjacent devices were of no useto any of us).

To return to the fundamentalpoint, nevertheless, (I have read, and studied, demonstrably too often amongthe more leisurely texts), we saw them. The Terror. The Plague. TheZombies. And that was exactly what they were, and are.

Mankind has always died fromstupid accidents, (myself, for example), or war, (the poor knight), or thewickedness of others, (Coral), or else by biological means – the normalplagues, (such as the influenza epidemic of 1918 that carried off the physicalbeing of Laurel), or by our own despairing and disillusioned hands,(Elizabeth). After that, most of us seem to go on our own way into some other‘life’, or to, one hopes, kind and serene oblivion. A few, for whateverconfused or dedicated reasons, remain where we fell – or where most, or mostsignificantly, we were happy. But the jettisoned bodies decay. They are – were– buried, or otherwise destroyed. The sensible dustbins of law, animal need,and time, dispose of them.

Not so with the Terror. Thesethings, patently devoid of anything that might be termed soul, let alone mind,roam the landscape, here and – by now, it seems – everywhere about the world.

What they are, God (or if notGod, maybe Nothing) knows. But an impulse they are, a brainless and despiritedone, intransigently housed in a yet-operational machine of flesh and bone. Ableto wreak havoc and death in turn. Able, in turn, to infect and annexe, swellingtheir army of the damned. Which then is ever intent to obliterate andamalgamate, probably, everything.

They are the ultimate insult ofsome Satanic or Jehovan Curse upon the race of Men.

Not merely to kill us all, but toremake us as the clay without the substance, the force without eitherconscience or true Will.

Ghosts are not like these eviland disgusting unmanned tanks of Hell.

Ghosts are only – heart and mindand, perhaps partially, soul; smoke and sighing, music and silence, memory,sorrow, and love.

But the Terror is Hate. Lackingeven passion to excuse it.

2

Elizabeth

Ikilled myself because I could.

Pretty simple, yes?

I was happiest in my earlythirties. A lot is talked about the 1960’s and Free Love, and the accessibilityof the Pill, but it certainly wasn’t just that. I’d had a happy childhood, mymother a musician (piano), my father a businessman who loved concerts andtheatre. They were great, these parents, attractive and clever and kind, whichI gather is an unusual combination. Lucky little Lizzie.

I did the pre-ordained stuff, butnot university. I didn’t want to. I played (piano too) with a small classical orchestraup near Wales, and painted. That was my real need. Painting, and later, to alimited but for me fulfilling extent, sculpture. I earned enough for a littletown flat. But I had an income from my parents. (I said, didn’t I, luck unusuallygood.) My father’s benefice came via his Will.

My dad died at forty-one. Heart.(The love of music had made it swell too much maybe – even back then, forty-onewas premature.) My mother grieved but survived. Remarried. She livedinto her eighties. In fact, (ha!) she outlived me by a couple of decades.

I was born about 1933. (Funnything is, I can never now quite remember if it was ‘33, or ‘32 – oreven, ‘34 – but near enough.) So I was a kid, a ‘little girl’, when the SecondWorld War opened its jaws on us all. And now, another odd thing. Because as akid I wasn’t too freaked out. My parents managed to keep calm, you see, andthat kept me calm. And anyhow, we moved out of London fairly soon. Bythe time I was seven and a half, (thereabouts), we were northwest, living in alittle village full of dolls’ houses and sheep, and pretty as a flower, whosename, in English, meant Cherries.

The first time I ever saw thisplace, I mean here, where now I am, was with my parents. We visited it, a siteof Historic Interest. The war had ended a while before that, and we were movingagain, but not right back down south, just southward somewhat, to make Londona bit easier of access for my mother occasionally, and Dad a lot. I wonderedafterwards if all that travelling, all those gaps of not being with us, helpedmake my father die. I was almost sixteen when it happened. I remember I’dbought him a present, (crazily his birthday fell only a few days after mine.) Ikept it for years, the present, still wrapped up. It was a faithful copy ofthe original score of a Mozart aria, belonging to the Queen of the Night.Or... I think it was the QotN... Being dead can make you forgetful, andsometimes of those most special things you dearly want to recall. I don’t knowwhy. I’ve heard the others say so. It isn’t just me.

So then. Thisfairly-well-orientated child who, presumably, despite a sad prematurebereavement, and the re-wedding of her mother, grew up into a confident adult.How did this kid finish by killing herself at exactly the same age her fatherhad been when Death broke him in two over one cruel skeletal knee?

WellI was happy in my twenties, too, and in my early thirties I sort of took wing.I was young enough, and attractive, and I had lovers when I wanted them. And mywork, the painting and sculpture, were getting some recognition, and alsoearning quite well. I was never snobby. I was happy to do book-jackets too,album covers and posters, and a few portraits. I had several quite successfulexhibitions in Cardiff and Manchester, and eventually two in London. My statueof Daphne turning into a shrub, (to escape from the lustful god Apollo), wasput up in Greenwich Park, near the Meridian. Although unfortunately, there wasa fault with something in the plinth and in the hurricane of 1987 Daphne, partverdure or not, was blown right off and smashed in chunks. Of course, I’d beensmashed off my plinth a few years myself, by then. I saw it on TV here, aboutthe statue, and thought I didn’t care. But later