Turquoiselle, Tanith Lee [100 best novels of all time .TXT] 📗

he had before. He waited, not for anothertheatrical surge, (explosion, shot), but perhaps for his brain to catch up. Itdid not seem to. It maundered around the edges of the plot, the story-line,veering off as if bored, to other, tinier events – an ant on a blade of glass,indifferent to the larger world and intent on its own life-drama; an increasingawareness of his own tiredness and physical hunger – when had he last eaten?God knew – which the cold water had not alleviated.

However, the fact of the unfinished water bottle was what, in theend, made him get to his feet. He needed more fluid, he thought, and besidesthere might be something palatable in the fridge, aside from anchovies.

So, back up the slope Carver went, and straight up the steps tothe shed door.

Only as he opened it did he properly understand, aside from a mereconcept, that a man lay dead now in the wooden room, or dying even, if Crofthad got his last move wrong.

Croft had not. He had been infallibly perfect. The chair hadfallen again as the power of the gun propelled him from it. Croft lay a briefspace from the chair, and the gun too had separated from both the chair and theman, done with them, and its role temporarily concluded.

One could not mistake that Croft was dead, either. He had knownwhat he did, had maybe practiced it earlier, (dress rehearsals). A smear ofblood had ebbed from his mouth, a fragment of a tooth. His face otherwise wasonly closed, as his eyes were; more a shutter than a face: No one home. Theback of his skull, and some of its formerly internal cargo, had flown free tostrike the wall.

The smell that hung there was bizarre yet over-intimate, humandischarges of different inevitable sorts. The visual effect, despite its utterconviction, contained an intense element of unreality. Carver found he was notconvinced. Although he knew, with intrinsic built-in knowledge, as of life and death themselves,that the procedure had been achieved and was complete.

Nor could he move. He did not have full liberty. For example, now,he could not – or would not – go to the fridge. Somehow, but speaking aloud,he ordered himself to the table, and grabbed the bottle of water.

Then he found it hard to leave the table.

Where was he going? To the door, and out again.

Leave this – this room – area – stage-set – leave it to theremains on the floor.

“Comeon,” Carver said aloud. His voice was iron, emotionless.

Myson, Croft had said. But not to Carver, however it had seemed. It wasto the past Croft had referred, the past that went by so slowly.

My son. Years ago. They killed him. Not enough... to bury.

Carver turned, gained the door, went out. He shut the doorcarefully, and locked it with the triple keys.

The smoke was getting less. How much time had gone by now? Thesun, or its implication, had shifted. Below, through the trees, he could justmake out movement around the building. Nothing nearer. And nothing there wasdistinct enough anyway to ascertain what damage had been caused.

He must get on.

Try to reach some aperture of escape, even if he had not everlocated anything on his forays. He should have taken the gun. He knewsufficient to fire one. Go back in then, into the shed, approach the body, takethe gun.

He was not afraid or anxious about the body. It was not that. Andyet somehow it would not be possible to go back into the shed again.

Carver walked down from the rise once more the other way, awayfrom the building, the sheds, northward. He got now about two hundred metres.There was a bench, not stone with griffins, only plain wood, backless, no armrests. Carver sat on the bench.

Drink the water. Pull himself together. (They had been fond ofthat expression at the schools.) Why did no one else come in this direction?But they would. In a while. He should have taken the gun. Or perhaps it hadheld merely a solitary bullet. No, at least two – Croft had offered to killCarver. There must therefore have been at least one more – or did he knowCarver would not consent, or did –

A bird called from the tops of the trees, shrill and angry.

Carver drank the water.

Theinterval was concluded. Carver found he had lain down full length on the benchand slept. Had the water been drugged? No. Stop that. Exhaustion, that was all.And carelessness – due to what? Shock? Fear? Insanity – yes, no doubt that. Thechemical or viral madness that struck this Place – introduced–

All the trees had changed to a smoky copper. Red Alert,

6th Level – only sunset. Pull yourself –

He sat up, and the empty plastic bottle fled from him,dissociating itself, as the gun had from Croft.

Somebody was standing on the rise, where the sheds were, aboveCarver, and looked over at him. The figure was painted, on its right side, asunset, nail varnish red. A woman. Then she dropped down, the way a cat or dog mighthave that had been standing on its hind legs to perform a trick – He could notsee her now.

Carver did not shift from the sitting position. Not aware of it,still he knew the woman was springing down the hill towards him. As she brokethrough the mix of shadows and shapes on to the apron of the weedy turf, henodded. “Hello, Ms Merville. Out for a run?”

She had halted.

She stood knee-high in fern, wild geranium, the taller grasses.Despite her contemporary jeans and T-shirt she had, with her long dark hair andcuriously rhythmic stasis, a look of something classical. She was slimly curvedagainst the light. Her hair reached her waist. Her eyes were not blue – theywere – some freakish overlay of the dying light.

“Car,” she said, “come with me, back to the sheds.”

“No,” he said pleasantly. “I don’t want to, thanks.”

“I know what happened,” she said. “I saw him through the window.But there are six other sheds. One of those.”

“We’ve all gone fucking mental, Angie,” he said. “Better get usedto it.”

“You’re wrong,” she said. Her voice, as his