Ghosts and Other Lovers Read online

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  Lydia arrived four days later. Sitting in her chair by the window, well wrapped in shawls and blankets, with nothing to do but watch and wait, Eustacia thought she’d never been so glad to see another person. It was life Lydia brought into her room — the sickroom, her prison — life and a taste of the world she had grown hungry for.

  “Whatever is the matter with Mildred?” Lydia asked as she swept in. “A face as long as a wet Sunday when she said you were poorly but — oh!” The cheerful prattle ended, the exclamation shocked out of her, when, as she bent to kiss her sister, her lips encountered not the familiar warm, soft texture of her check, but flesh slippery with a chill and slimy coating.

  “I’m not ill,” Eustacia said looking urgently into her sister’s eyes. To her relief, she saw neither horror nor disgust reflected there, only a puzzled concern. “No matter what Mildred thinks, or the doctor. It is odd, though … hard to understand … hard to write about in a letter. That’s why I wanted to see you. I wanted you to see me. Because I am all right … I am still me.

  “Of course you are! Still my own dear sister. Is this some new ploy to escape doing chores? Or is that what Mildred thinks? I had thought, from the way she spoke, that it was your time.”

  She shook her head. “Do sit down, Lydia. I’ll have to show you.” She was excited and scared. There was a tingling inside, a nervous reaction to match the purely physical, localized tingle in her hands. The feeling of something that had to come out. And, now, a new excitement because there was meaning and new purpose to what she was about to do. For the first time she had an audience. Was she good enough for her audience? Lydia’s response was all-important.

  “You remember … Mr. Elphinstone?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “And what he did that evening, and what he showed us? The ectoplasm? He did something else that same evening, to me. When he touched me. I don’t understand how or why, but he gave it to me somehow.” She paused, aware of gathering her power, of concentrating it all in her hands, which she held now before her, just above her lap. Lydia said nothing, and there was nothing in her look but waiting and wonder.

  “Watch,” said Eustacia, and stared at her own hands as the thick, wavering white steam poured out of them, her fingers become fountains. Ten separate streams merged and grew into one almost-solid form: head, neck, shoulders, chest … until it was a baby floating there, its features somewhat vague and undefined but still and undeniably a baby. There.

  Eustacia felt a little dizzy, and had the familiar sensation of having been drained. But she also felt triumphant, and as she looked up from her creation she was smiling happily. “There — see? It’s your baby.”

  Lydia’s face had gone an unhealthy yellowish color. She shook her head slowly. “No,” she said, sounding tortured. “That’s not my baby — it’s not!” She clapped her hands to her mouth, retching, and staggered to her feet, knocking the chair over with the heavy sideways sweep of her skirts. She managed to get to the basin before she threw up.

  Eustacia closed her eyes, but the noise and smell made her stomach churn in terrible sympathy. She kept her gorge down with great effort. “I’m sorry,” she said, when Lydia’s crisis seemed to have passed. “I know it must be a shock to see your baby—”

  “No! That’s not my baby! How can you?”

  Eustacia struggled to rise, reaching for her sister.

  Lydia shrieked. “Don’t touch me! You monster!”

  “But — but you were so happy when Mr. Elphinstone did it — this is the same — don’t you see? I can do the same thing—”

  “It’s not the same! It’s not the same!” Lydia glared at her, and this look was much worse than the look Mildred had given her, for there was not merely horror in it, but hate. “How could you … what are you trying to do, make me miscarry?”

  Eustacia’s mouth hung open. “I didn’t know… .”

  “Monster! Monster!”

  The door opened then — Mildred, attracted by the noise. Weeping, Lydia rushed to the safety of her older sister’s embrace. They went out of the room together and the door closed, shutting Eustacia in alone with the thing she had made.

  She looked at her creation, the baby bobbing and floating in the air like something unborn. Like something dead. But it had never been alive. It wasn’t real, not a real baby. But neither was the thing Mr. Elphinstone had made, although, in the dim and flickering firelight, it had seemed real enough to eyes that wanted it to be. She understood that the situation was different here and now. But she hadn’t meant any harm. She thought of getting up and going downstairs, going after Lydia and explaining, making her understand. But she had not the energy for it. It was impossible. She could scarcely even think. All she could do was fall back in her chair and fall asleep.

  When she woke, with a throbbing head competing for attention against a painfully empty stomach, it was much later in the day and the room was thick with shadows. The baby had vanished back into the nothing from which it had been conjured. She rose from her chair and stretched aching muscles, feeling as if she had become an old woman while she slept. Certainly she felt like a different person from the hopeful girl who had waited impatiently for her sister that morning. She hoped that the passing of the hours had calmed Lydia. Maybe she would be ready to listen now, and surely if she listened she would understand. She still felt Lydia was the one person in the world who could understand.

  But when she reached the door she could not open it. She thought at first it was her own weakness, and continued twisting the handle to no avail. Her wits were still so slow after her sleep that it took her some time to realize that the door to her room had been locked from the outside.

  They had locked her in.

  It had to be a mistake. She went back to her chair, turned it so she could look out the window, and sat down. She did not want to find out that it had not been a mistake, so she would not pound on the door and make demands that could be refused. Mildred would come up and unlock it later. It must have been locked on account of Lydia’s fright. Once she was allowed to explain there would be no more need for locked doors.

  By the time Mildred came up with her dinner on a tray Eustacia was almost ready to weep with hunger and worry.

  “Mildred, I have to see Lydia, I have to explain—”

  “She’s gone home.”

  “I didn’t mean to upset her; I have to tell her—”

  “Oh, I know. It’s not your fault.” A sneer was not Mildred’s usual expression. She would not meet her sister’s eye as she spoke.

  “It’s not my fault — I can’t help it — I didn’t mean it — oh, please—”

  “I know. You’re ill.” She snorted. “I saw the doctor. I rode with Lydia into town, and I had a consultation with him. Do you know what he said? There’s nothing wrong with you at all. Not physically. He says it’s all in your head. You know what I say? I say it’s evil. Not sickness — evil. Not in your head, but your heart. Evil in your heart. And that is your fault. You’d better admit it, missy. And pray to God to take it away. There’s your dinner.”

  “Please!”

  But Mildred was already out of the room without a backward look. And then came the sound of the key turning in the lock.

  Eustacia ate her dinner. What else was there to do? After she had eaten she could think more clearly, but the thoughts were not pleasant ones. It was obvious Lydia would be of no help; she had been too badly frightened. If only she had been more cautious … if only she had led Lydia on a bit more carefully… . She thought of Mr. Elphinstone’s pompous speech; the way he had elicited responses from his audience; the extinguishing of the lamps. By firelight, my baby would have looked more real, she thought. But it was too late to think of that now. Lydia would not help her. The doctor had, literally, washed his hands of her, declaring her either a fake or mad. And Mildred was of no use, either, having decided she was bad. Worse than that, Mildred was her jailor, and represented her whole family.
/>   Who was there who could help her?

  She remembered the cold, damp touch of Mr. Elphinstone’s hands, and the way his eyes had pierced into hers. He had marked her then, that evening; he had made her his, although she had tried to deny it. To give in now, to go to him despite her revulsion … she would be trading one sort of imprisonment for another. But at least it would be different. Not the life she would have chosen freely, but still a life. And she would learn to use her talent: it would be a talent then, and not a loathsome illness.

  But how could she go to him when she couldn’t leave this room? She might write a letter, but anything she sent out would have to go through Mildred. She imagined Mildred reading it and throwing it on the fire. And even if she managed to by-pass Mildred she realized with despair that she had no address for Mr. Elphinstone.

  Hopeless.

  There was a tingling in her fingertips.

  No, not hopeless.

  She remembered how the form of Mr. Elphinstone had first emerged from her body — the struggle, and how terrified she had been. He was still there, still waiting to come out. She no longer feared him, at least not in the same way. There were other, greater fears. She was ready now to welcome him and his plans for her.

  She put out her hands and let the solid smoky stuff stream out; watched as it formed into fingers touching her own at the tips. A man’s fingers, a man’s large hands, bony wrists lengthening into skinny arms, naked shoulders and naked chest. She was trembling now and starting to feel faint, but she held her hands as steady as she could and let it go on happening, thinking all the while of Mr. Elphinstone, remembering him as he had been, and as he was. Now the neck and head. The shifting clouds of his face roiled and finally solidified into bearded chin and mouth, long thin nose, high brow, and the eyes — the eyes were closed.

  She stared and waited for them to open; waited to have those blazing orbs fixed on her, and see the lips move, and hear him speak. He was finished now, at least, as much of him as she could make. She could do no more. It was up to him to take over. But Mr. Elphinstone looked dead, like the baby, hanging motionless in the air.

  Lydia had said that at most seances when ghosts appeared they spoke, answering questions and making cryptic remarks. Her baby of course had been too young.

  “Talk to me,” said Eustacia. “Tell me what to do.”

  Her breath disturbed the figure, making it bob slightly. A bit of one arm disintegrated, leaving a hole the size of a baby’s fist just above the right elbow. She cried out again, and her fingers closed on cold, dead matter. When she pulled away, sickened, she saw she had destroyed parts of both lower arms, and the hands floated free, detached from the arms. One of the hands floated up toward the ceiling, becoming more insubstantial as it rose.

  Mr. Elphinstone could not speak to her, for Mr. Elphinstone was not here. She had created something that looked like Mr. Elphinstone — or like her memory of Mr. Elphinstone — and that was all. It did not live. It never had and never would. It was inhabited by no ghosts. There were no ghosts. She could not blame Mr. Elphinstone for that, nor for the fact that he could neither enslave nor save her.

  She was alone in her room as she watched her dream disintegrate. She was alone with her disease, her curse, her madness — her strange, useless talent.

  From Another Country

  That summer Alida became aware of death in much the same way she had been aware of sex in her teens: it was everywhere around her, experienced by others; it was inevitable and terrifying and she could not stop thinking about it.

  She was a woman of thirty years, unmarried, childless. She had never lost anyone close to her. And in that summer the doctors found an inoperable, malignant tumor in her father’s brain.

  Sitting with her father, Alida longed to ask him about the experience of dying, but she could not, any more than she had ever been able to ask him, when she was younger, about sex. There were certain mysteries parents would never reveal to their children. Even to ask him about pain seemed disrespectful. She saw him every weekend, and usually one evening during the week as well, and when she visited she tried to be cheerful and ordinary, and to anticipate his needs, giving him the pills before he asked for them. They said little to each other. Their closest moments, then as always, were in watching television, sharing the same vicarious experience, her laugh echoing his.

  And then she saw death, before her very eyes.

  She was in Holborn underground station, waiting for a train after a weary day at work. The platform was hot and crowded, and Alida stared at a particular man simply because he happened to be in her line of sight.

  Her thoughts were on other things — her father, a new pair of shoes, an argument at work — but she absorbed the fact that this dark-haired, dark-skinned man in early middle-age was wearing a suit which looked too heavy for the weather, and was fanning himself erratically with a folded Financial Times.

  She saw him hit himself in the face with the paper as he dropped it, and, as the paper fell, he fell too, heavily and clumsily, his arms and legs jerking stiffly, out of control. He was probably dead by the time he hit the ground. Alida didn’t need a doctor’s pronouncement to confirm her impression: she seemed to know it instinctively, with the same certainty that she knew she was alive.

  Although he was a stranger, his death made a powerful impression on her. That night she couldn’t fall asleep: she kept seeing his death, as if the darkness of her room was a screen for the film of her memories. She noticed new details — the pattern on his tie, the scuff marks on his shoes — and saw all the other individuals who made up the crowd in which he died. There was a girl in a pink dress and white cloth boots reading The Clan of the Cave Bear; two dirty, spiky-haired teenagers in black leather holding hands; a cluster of American women talking loudly about Cats; a man with one gold earring; a couple of sober, dark-suited businessmen, one of whom carried a bright blue plastic briefcase; an Oriental woman with two doll-like children; a man in black —

  A man in black who had not been there before, and was no longer there after, the death.

  Alida sat up in bed, struggling to breathe, closing her eyes the better to see.

  A man in black.

  Close to the man who had died. She saw his hand come out; he had touched the man who died. When? Before or after the paper fell? Could it have been coincidence? Just a man in a black suit among so many others in gray or blue or brown —

  Except that she couldn’t see his face, as she could see the faces of all the others. And after the death, he was gone. Gone utterly, as if he had never been.

  No matter how she struggled, she could not see his face, nor where he went after the death. When at last, near morning, she slept, it was to dream about the man in black, standing in the crowded underground station, watching her, watching her father fall before her and die.

  The following week, Alida decided to alter her usual habit of visiting her parents on Saturday, and instead went to see some friends who were fixing up an old house in Stoke Newington.

  It was a warm, sunny day, and as she stepped off the bus at the request stop on Newington Church Street, Alida noticed how many people were out: clumps of drably dressed teenagers lounging against the buildings; women in brilliant saris flowing along like the personification of summer; geriatric couples moving at a snail’s pace; young mothers trying to keep their children close at hand. The street rose and curved, and the pavements were narrow. As Alida dodged and moved along, she occasionally was forced off the curb into the road, which made her nervous, for the traffic moved swiftly, and the drivers, as they rounded the curve, did not slow down or seem aware of the need for special care.

  Ten yards ahead, by the tobacconist’s shop before the bend in the road, a golden retriever was lying on the pavement, and a woman with a baby in a pushchair had paused to talk to two young men, creating a bottleneck which might be dangerous if some impatient pedestrian stepped off the curb into the road at the wrong moment. But it wasn’t the awarenes
s of possible danger which made Alida feel suddenly cold, made her clench her teeth and walk more quickly as she rubbed bare arms prickling with gooseflesh; it was the sight of the man in black waiting just beyond the woman, baby, men, and dog.

  She didn’t for a moment believe she was mistaken, that he might have been some other man in an ordinary black suit, because it was by some sense other than sight that she recognized him. In fact, from this distance she could not even see his face which was somehow — mysteriously, in the open air and bright sunlight — in shadow.

  She began to walk even more quickly, almost running, in her determination to reach him before he could disappear — determined to see his face and find him ordinary.

  Beside her, below her line of sight, someone else was moving: a child. And she heard a woman’s voice, sharp but tired, calling behind her: “Gavin!”

  Alida realized that she was going to have to jog down into the street for a moment: either that or trip over the dog, or risk losing sight of her quarry as she pushed past the people in her way. The risk of the traffic seemed preferable.

  Something brushed past her hip: still thinking of the dog, she glanced down and saw a red-haired child, perhaps three years old, running past and giggling. From behind, sounding more despairing, the woman’s voice again: “Gav-in!”

  The man in black stepped forward, now, like the child, actually standing in the street. His arms were outstretched, and he bent his knees, lowering himself, reaching for the child who, seemingly unaware, was running directly toward him.

  Alida was staring straight at the man in black now, and still she could not see his face. There was a glare of sunlight reflecting off the windows of an approaching car, and it dazzled her.

  Later, she went over and over it in her mind, trying to figure out why she had done what she did.

  She had known, on the instant of seeing the man in black stretching out his arms, that the child was doomed. Young Gavin was obviously about to die — probably to be hit by a car rounding the bend.