Still dancing, she pressed one hand to her belly, took the cigarette between her fingers, and drew the smoke back into her. The taste of it was like drinking fire. She flicked the ash, watching the soft gray fall down, down, down into the wide red puddle at her feet.
Not wine.
Blood.
He stood framed by the basement door. A young man, and ageless. His shoulders were broad as a bull, his pale hair cut close to the skull. The dark slacks she’d seen in the mirror were tight and strained across the hip, as if designed to point out the thing’s barely restrained erection. With every deep, heaving breath, blood sheeted down his body from the hole where his heart should have been. She had the impression of corrupted meat beneath that pale skin. His lips curled back in wordless rage, baring teeth too sharp to be human.
The warmth within her was gone. Her face was pale, and the electric shock of fear turned her dance to stillness. The man shook his head at her once, slowly back and forth. When he opened his mouth and howled, she retreated two quick involuntary steps, the countertop digging at the small of her back. Hatred radiated from him. Hatred and malice and the promise of violence. The tiles between them were the slick red of fresh slaughter.
When she spoke, her voice trembled. It sounded very small, even to her.
“Don’t like it, huh?”
The ghost shifted his head side to side, neither nod nor shake, but stretching. Like an athlete preparing for some terrible effort. A clearer threat than balled fists.
“W-what,” she tried to say, then crossed her arms and took a fast, nervous drag on the cigarette. She lifted her chin in defiance. “What’re you gonna do about it?”
His eyes moved across her body like she was something he owned. The hissing sound of his breath came from everywhere.
“So, what? You want to hurt me? Come on, then,” she said, her voice taking on a little strength. “If you’re gonna do it, do it!”
He stepped into the room, filling the doorway. The death-blood, slick on his belly, glittered. He bared his teeth, growling like a dog.
“You want to hurt me? Then hurt me,” she yelled. “Hurt me!”
The ghost screamed and rushed across the room toward her. She felt its rage and hatred surrounding her, swallowing her. She saw its hand rising to slap her down, and she flinched back, her eyes closed, and braced for the blow. Every scar on her skin tingled like someone had touched them with ice. Filthy water poured into her mouth, her nose, corrupted and sour with decay. She felt the spirit pressing against her, pushing into her skin. Its rage lifted her like a wave.
And then it was gone.
She stood in the kitchen, her body shaking and her ragged breath coming in sobs. She was terribly cold. The wine on her toes—only wine—was half-dried and sticky. Storm wind battered at the windows, the walls. The furnace rumbled, fighting against the frigid air. She sank slowly, her back against the cabinet, and hugged her knees. A stray tear fell down her cheek and she shuddered uncontrollably twice.
Then, between one breath and the next, her mouth relaxed. Her body released. The breaking tension was more than sexual.
She started laughing: a deep, satisfied sound, like the aftermath of orgasm.
SUNDAY MORNING BROUGHT the first snow of the season. The thick, wet flakes appeared just before dawn, dark against the bright city backsplash of the clouds, and transformed to a perfect white once they had fallen. After the morning’s toast and tea and sermon, Mr. Kleinfeld, wrapped in his good wool overcoat, lumbered out, snow shovel over his shoulder. He cleared his walkway and his drive, then the stretch of sidewalk in front of his house. The trees all around were black-barked and frosted with snow, and very few cars passed, the tracks of their tires leaving white furrows and never digging so deep as the asphalt.
Finished with his own house, he made his way through the ankle-high snow to his neighbor’s. No lights glowed in the house, no tracks marked her walk. Her driveway hadn’t been used. He hesitated, not wanting to wake her, but it was almost midday. He rang the bell, and when no answer came, mittened manfully on the door. No one came. He shook his head and put himself to work. The clouds above were bright as the snow when he finished, the air not yet above the freezing point, but warmer all the same.
His wife met him at the door with a cup of hot cocoa, just as he’d known she would. He leaned the snow shovel by the door, took the warm mug, and kissed his wife’s dry cheek.
“I don’t think our new neighbor made it home last night,” he said. He sat in his chair. “I figure she’s seen it. Won’t be long now before she moves on.”
It was a conversation they’d had before, and he waited now for his wife’s agreement, her prediction: two more months, another month, a week. The missus was better at judging these things than he was. So he was surprised when she stood silent for a long moment, shaking her head.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I just do not know …”
DAVID’S APARTMENT STILL showed the gaps where she had been. His clothes still hung in only half of the bedroom closet, the hangers moving into the emptiness she had left only slowly, as if hoping that her blouses and slacks and dresses might come back. The corner where her desk had once been was still vacant, the four hard circles that the legs had pressed into the carpet relaxed out a little, but not gone. The kid upstairs was practicing his guitar again, working on power chords that had driven her half-crazy when she’d lived there. They seemed sort of cute now.
“He’s getting better,” David said.
She rolled over, stuffing the pillow under her head and neck as she did. A thin line of snow ran along the windowsill—the first of the season. David, beside her, nodded toward the ceiling.
“He made it all the way through ‘Jesus of Suburbia’ last week,” he said.
“All five parts?”
“Yep.”
“Kid’s going places,” she said.
“Please God that it’s places out of earshot.”
She brushed her fingertips across his chest. His skin was several tones darker than hers, and the contrast made her hand seem paler than she was, and her scars as white as the snow. He had his first gray hair in among the black, just over his ear. His dark eyes shifted over to her, his smile riding the line between postcoital exhaustion and melancholy. Quick as the impulse, she rolled the few more inches toward him and kissed his shoulder. He raised his eyebrows the way he always did when he knew that she was nervous.
“What’s your plan for the day?” he asked.
“Housework,” she said. “You?”
“Get up early and hit the Laundromat,” he said.
She nodded.
“And since that didn’t work?”
“Do an emergency load in the sink to get through work tomorrow,” he said. “I’ve got to meet up with Gemma at three to get back my scanner.”
“You’ll need to get hopping. It’s past noon now.”
“Another few minutes won’t make a difference,” he said, putting his hand over hers. He wasn’t pretty—his face too wide, his nose bent where it had been broken as a child and never been put right, his jaw touched by the presentiment of jowls. Handsome, maybe, in an off-putting way. “Is there something to talk about?”
“Is,” she said.
He took a long, slow breath and let it out slowly. Not a sigh so much as the preparatory breath of a high diver. Or a man steeling himself for bad news.
“I think you should come over tonight,” she said. “Take a look at the place. Bring your laundry, too.”
He sat up. The blankets dropped to his lap. She looked at him, unable to read his expression.
“You’re changing the rules?” he said. Each word was as gentle as picking up eggs.
“No, I’m not. I always said that the not coming over part was temporary. It’s just … time. That’s all.”
“So. You really aren’t breaking up with me?”
“Jesus,” she said. She took the pillow from under her head and hit him with it lightl
y. Then she did it again.
“It is traditional,” he said. “Girl gets a house without consulting her boyfriend, moves all her stuff out, tells him he can’t come over. Says she’s ‘working through something’ but won’t say what exactly it is? It’s hard not to connect those dots.”
“And the part where I tell you in simple declarative sentences that I’m not breaking up with you?”
“Goes under mixed signals,” he said.
She took a deep breath. On the street, a siren rose and fell.
“Sorry,” she said. She got up from the bed, pulling one of the sheets with her and wrapping it around her hips. “Look, I understand that this has been hard. I’ve asked for a lot of faith.”
“You really have.”
“And given that I don’t have an entirely uncheckered past, and all,” she said. “I see why you would freak. You and my mother both.”
“Your mother?”
“She’s been reading me the riot act ever since she heard about it. She really likes you.”
He leaned back, surprise and pleasure in his expression.
“Your mother likes me?”
“Focus, sweetheart. I’m apologizing here.”
“And I don’t mean to interrupt,” he said.
Relief had left him giddy. Between his brave face and her attention being elsewhere, she’d managed to ignore the sadness and dread that had been seeping into him. Now that it was lifting a little, she saw how deep it had gone. She found her pants in a heap on the floor, sat down at the dressing table and lit a cigarette. The taste of the smoke helped her to think. When she spoke, her voice was lower.
“I’ve had a rough ride this life, you know? I used to be ashamed of that. I used to think that after Nash I was … broken. Damaged goods. Like that. And feeling like that has …”
She stopped, shook herself, laughed at something, and took another drag.
“Feeling like that has haunted me,” she said, with an odd smile.
“And this house is part of not feeling that way?”
“It is.”
“Then I already like it,” he said. “Sight unseen. If it helps you see yourself the way I see you, then it’s on my side.”
Corrie chuckled and shook her head.
“That might be going a little far,” she said. “But anyway. I want you to come over. I want you to see it. You should bring a sweater. It gets kind of cold sometimes.”
“I’m there.”
“And I want you to think about whether you’d like to move in.”
“Corrie?”
“There’s enough room. The neighborhood’s a little sketchy, and the jet noise sucks, but not worse than the jukebox hero practicing all the time.”
“Corrie, are you saying you still want to live with me?”
Her smile was tight and nervous.
“Not asking for a decision,” she said. “But I’m opening negotiations.”
He slipped to the side of the bed, slid to the floor at her feet, and laid his head in her lap. For a long moment, neither of them moved or spoke; then Corrie wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
“Come on, silly,” she said. “You’ve got to get ready for Gemma. Go get that scanner back.”
“I do,” he said with a sigh. “Come shower with me?”
“Not today,” she said. And when he raised his eyebrows, “I want to smell like you when I get home.”
1532 LACHMONT DRIVE seethed around her. Every noise—the hum of the refrigerator, the distant roar of the furnace, the ticking of the wooden floors as the push-pull of heat and cold adjusted the boards—had voices behind them, screaming. The faintest smell of hair and skin burning touched the air. She knew they were meant to be hers.
Corrie hung her coat in the closet. A shape flickered in the basement doorway, dark eyes and inhuman teeth. She set a kettle on the stovetop and smoked a cigarette while it heated. When the clouds outside broke, the doubled light of sky and snow pressed in at the blinds. The kettle whistled. She took a mug out of the cupboard, put in a bag of chamomile tea, and poured the steaming water in. When she sat down, there was blood on the floor. A bright puddle, almost too red to be real, and then a trail as wide as a man’s hips where the still-living man had been dragged across to the basement door. When she looked up, the air had a layer of smoke haze a foot below the ceiling. It might have been her cigarette. It might have been gun smoke. She sipped her tea, savoring the heat and the faint sweetness.
“Fine,” she said.
She stood up slowly, stretching. The stairs down to the basement were planks of wood painted a dark, chipping green. The years had softened the edges. The basement had none of the brightness of the day above it. Even with the single bare bulb glowing, the shadows were thick. The furnace roar was louder here, and the voice behind it spat rage and hatred. She followed the trail of blood to the corner of the basement, where washer and dryer sat sullen in the gloom. She leaned down, put her shoulder to the corner of the dryer, and shifted it.
The metal feet shrieked against the concrete. The scar under it was almost three feet wide, a lighter place where the floor had been broken, taken up, and then filled in with a patch of almost-matching cement. She sat down on the dusty floor. There was blood on her hands now, black and sticky and copper-smelling. A spot of white appeared on the odd concrete and began to spread: frost. She put her hand on it like she was caressing a pet.
“We should probably talk,” she said. “And when I say that, I mean that I should talk, and you, for once, should listen.”
Something growled from the corner by the furnace. A shadow detached from the gloom and began pacing like a tiger in its cage. She sipped her tea and looked around the darkness, her gaze calm and proprietary.
“It’s funny the things they get wrong, you know? They remember that you threatened Joe Arrison, but instead of his cock, you were going to cut off his nose. They know I went to the Laughing Academy, but they don’t remember that I got out. Apparently, I was going on about Satan or something. ‘Mind gone to putty.’”
She stroked the concrete. The frost was spreading. A dot of red smeared it at the center, blood welling up from the artificial stone.
“And you really screwed me up, you know?” she said. “Shooting you really was worse than I thought it would be. I was so scared that someone would find you. I had nightmares all the time. I’d see someone who looked a little like you or I’d smell that cheap-ass cologne you liked, and I’d start panicking. I even tried to kill myself once. Didn’t do a very good job of it.
“I was one messed up chica. Every couple weeks, I’d do a search online. I just knew that there was going to be something. Bones found at 1532 Lachmont Drive. So what do I find instead? Ghost stories. There was one that even had a drawing of you. And so I knew, right?”
The shadow shrieked at her, its mouth glowing like there was something burning inside it. The blood at the center of the frost became a trickle. Corrie let the icy flow stain her fingers.
“I was so freaked out,” she said, laughing. “I spent years putting myself back together, and here you still were. I don’t think I slept right for a month. And then one day, something just clicked, you know? I’ve got a job. I can buy a house if I want.”
She sipped at her tea, but it had gone cold. She was sitting in a spreading pool of gore now, the blood spilling out to the corners of the room. More blood than a real body could contain. It soaked her pants and wicked up her shirt, chilling her, but not badly. The shadow hunched forward, ready to leap.
“David’s coming over tonight,” she said. “I wasn’t going to let him until I was sure it was safe. But tonight I’m going to make him dinner, and we’re probably going to get a little high, watch a DVD, something like that. And then I’m going to fuck him in your bedroom. And you? You’re going to watch.”
The blood rushed up. It was almost ankle-deep now, tiny waves of red rising up through the basement. Corrie smiled.
“You’ll really hate him,”
she said. “He is everything you could never be, and he really, really loves me. And you know what? I love him too. And we’re going to be here, maybe for years. Maybe forever. And we’re going to do everything you couldn’t. And we’re going to do it right. So, seriously. How’s that for revenge?”
The shadow screamed, rising up above her, blotting out the light. She could almost feel its teeth at her neck. She scratched.
“You’re dead, fucker,” she whispered to the darkness. “You can’t hurt me.”
Blood-soaked, she picked up her teacup and walked to the stairs. The ghost whipped at her with cold, insubstantial fingers. It screamed in her ears, battering her with anger and hatred. Corrie grinned, a sense of peace and calm radiating from her. The voice grew thinner, more distant, richer with despair. With each step she took, the visions of blood faded a little more, and by the time she stepped into the winter light, she was clean.
Lisa Tuttle
“Till Death We Do Part” says the familiar vow—but what about after that? Once your lover is gone, might your love be strong enough to draw them back? And would you want it to?
Lisa Tuttle made her first fiction sale in 1972 to the Clarion II anthology, after having attended the Clarion workshop, and by 1974 had won the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer of the year. She has gone on to become one of the most respected writers of her generation, winning the Nebula Award in 1981 for her story “The Bone Flute”—which, in a still controversial move, she refused to accept—and the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1993 for her novel Lost Futures. Her other books include a novel in collaboration with George R. R. Martin, Windhaven; the solo novels Familiar Spirit, Gabriel, The Pillow Friend, The Mysteries, and The Silver Bough; several books for children; the nonfiction works Heroines and Encyclopedia of Feminism; and, as editor, Skin of the Soul. Her copious short work has been collected in A Nest of Nightmares, Spaceship Built of Stone and Other Stories, Memories of the Body: Tales of Desire and Transformation, Ghosts and Other Lovers, and My Pathology. Born in Texas, she moved to Great Britain in 1980, and now lives with her family in Scotland.
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