by Lisa Tuttle
Mr. Elphinstone’s burning eyes fixed upon Eustacia. She went hot and cold. What did he want from her? Everyone was waiting for her to answer. There was no escape. She opened her mouth and out popped: “Ghosts.”
“Ghosts?” He smiled gravely. “But what are ghosts? Of what are they formed? The dead have no material substance. They do not block the light. They cannot be seen. And if they are to communicate with us in some way, in any way, physical substance is required. Where is it to come from? Nothing comes from nothing, as the poet said. And they must have something if we are to know them. From whence does it come? Why, dear people; dear, dear friends: it comes from me.” His smile became positively beatific; his face seemed to shine. “I am uniquely gifted to give our dearly departed a brief, a transitory, yet not entirely unsatisfactory, semblance of life. Certain mediums are gifted in this way with the ability to produce a substance known as ectoplasm, an emanation from my very flesh which clothes the fleshless spirits and allows them, however briefly, to live and speak to their loved ones. It is not God’s will that they should be returned to this life, when he has lifted them to a greater one, but neither is it God’s will that those they have left behind should suffer unduly, or doubt His promise of eternal life. It has been said, truly, ‘Seek and ye shall find; Ask and it shall be given.’ So now, dear friends, dear seekers, I ask you to watch and wait as I offer myself unselfishly for the use of any spirits hovering near.”
The lamps were extinguished as he spoke, and the room was lit only by firelight. Lydia touched her arm and whispered: “Watch him.”
Mr. Elphinstone’s eyes were closed. He sat like a statue. The others, having been here before, knew what to look for, so they were aware of what was happening before Eustacia noticed anything unusual. It was only by their rustlings and murmurings, and by Lydia’s clutching hand that she understood it was not a trick of her eyes in the dim light: there was a whitish vapor issuing forth from the region of Mr. Elphinstone’s knees, upon which his hands rested.
But it wasn’t only a vapor. It seemed to have more mass and solidity than that. Now he raised his hands to chest-level and it was obvious that this amorphous, shifting, cloudy-white stuff adhered in some way to his hands, grew out of them, perhaps. To the sound of gasps and moans and sighs from the assembly, the shining cloud between Mr. Elphinstone’s unmoving hands began to shape itself, to take on form. A human form, although small. A head, a neck, shoulders, arms … That was a face, surely? Eustacia wasn’t sure if there were facial features to be discerned in the flickering light, or if she was unconsciously making pictures, as one did when watching clouds.
Suddenly Lydia cried out. “That’s my baby! Oh, sweet George!”
Then she tumbled off her chair in a dead faint.
*
The seance was brought to an abrupt halt by the need to help Lydia. In all the turmoil of fetching smelling salts and water and relighting the lamps, Eustacia did not see what happened to the ghostly baby, but it was gone. Mr. Elphinstone, pale and worn-looking, remained aloof and said nothing as the women fussed about poor Lydia.
But poor Lydia was ecstatic. A trifle shaky, but, she assured everyone, the shock had been a joyful one, and she had not felt so well, so uplifted, in years.
“He was smiling,” said Lydia. “I never thought I’d see my baby smile again! Taken from me at three months, but he’s happy in Heaven. He’ll always be happy now, smiling forever. Such a comfort, to see him again and know he’s happy.”
It was for this Lydia had come to see Mr. Elphinstone, of course. Eustacia felt ashamed of herself for not realizing. She had thought at first this evening’s outing one of Lydia’s ways of introducing her younger sister to society and, therefore, to more eligible young men. Then she had thought the seance simply another of Lydia’s larks, like going to hear the speakers for women’s suffrage. She hadn’t realized it was personal… . Indeed, she tended to forget that her sister had ever known the brief, bitter blessing of motherhood. The babe had not lived long; had died three years ago, and in that time there had not come another to fill his cradle. And yet it had not occurred to her that Lydia might still be mourning. Usually Eustacia envied her sister the freedom granted her by marriage, but now she felt only pity.
*
For days afterward, back at home on the farm, the excitements of visiting her sister left behind, Eustacia was plagued by something wrong with her hands. She couldn’t seem to get them warm, not even by chafing them in front of the fire, which she was seldom allowed to do. For there was work to be done — there was always work to be done — and the best way to keep warm, said her sister Mildred, was to keep busy: it wasn’t worth arguing. And it wasn’t really the temperature of her fingers which bothered her but something else that seemed at odds with it: although they felt chilly, her hands perspired profusely and constantly. She wiped them whenever she could, on her apron or a towel, but it did no good. Her hands were always cold and damp.
Just like Mr. Elphinstone’s hands.
She tried not to think of it. It was too silly. What could his hands possibly have to do with hers? Was there such a thing as a cold in the hands that she might have caught from him? She had never heard of such a thing — a cold in the head, a cold in the chest, but not the hands — but that didn’t mean it wasn’t possible. A doctor would know … but doctors were expensive. Her father, seeing her perfectly healthy, would not countenance a visit to a doctor. If she tried to explain to her father she was certain his idea of a “cure” would be the same as Mildred’s: more hard work, less idle dreaming. She didn’t try to tell him, or anyone. Embarrassed by this odd problem, she washed her hands often, and kept a supply of pocket handkerchiefs.
One afternoon as she helped her sister shake out and fold clean linen from the drying line, Mildred suddenly screwed up her face and said sharply, “Eustacia! Have you a runny nose?”
“No, sister.” She felt her face get hot.
“Where do you suppose this came from?” There on the stiff, freshly washed whiteness of the sheet glistened four little blobs of mucus. On the other side, Eustacia had no doubt, would be found a fifth, the imprint left by her thumb. She stood mute, blushing.
“Have you lost your pocket handkerchief? ‘Tis a filthy, childish habit, Eustacia, to blow your nose into your fingers; something I would not have expected from you, careless though you often are in your personal habits. And so unhealthy! You should think of others.”
“I didn’t! My nose isn’t — ! I didn’t, Mildred, honestly!”
Mildred might have believed her since Eustacia, for all her faults, was no liar, but she couldn’t stop, was scarcely aware of, the little furtive gestures by which she attempted to dry and hide her hands.
Mildred’s eyes narrowed. “Show me your hands.”
There was a kind of relief in being caught, in being forced, at last, to share her dirty secret. Despite her having just wiped them, her hands were already moist again. Welling up from the ball of each finger, pooling in the palms, was something thicker, stickier, and less liquid than the perspiration she had, for several days, believed — or wished — it to be.
Face twisting in disgust, Mildred held her sister’s hands and examined them. Something nasty. But it had to be as obvious to Mildred as it was to Eustacia herself that the substance had not been blown or wiped onto the hands but was being produced — excreted — through the skin of the hands themselves.
“I don’t know what it is,” Eustacia said. “It’s been happening … several days now. I told you my hands were cold. You can feel that. At first it was only the cold … then, they seemed to be wet — and now … this. I don’t know what it is; I don’t know how to make it stop.” She burst into tears.
Tears were always the wrong tactic with Mildred. Scowling, she flung Eustacia’s hands back at her, and wiped her own harshly in her apron. “Stop bawling, girl, it doesn’t pain you, does it?”
Still sobbing, Eustacia shook her head.
“Well, then.
It’s nothing. No more’n a runny nose. Go wash yourself. Wash your hands well, mind. And keep them warm and dry. Maybe you should rest. That’s it. Lie down and keep warm. You can have a fire in your room. Rest and keep warm and you’ll be as right as rain by tomorrow.”
Eustacia stopped crying, pleased to know she would have the luxury of a fire in her room, and the still greater luxury of being allowed to do nothing at all.
In a family of hard workers, Eustacia was the lazy one. Lydia, too, had disliked the labor required of daughters in a house without servants, but Lydia was never idle. She enjoyed sewing, particularly embroidery and fine needlework, loved music, and was often to be found reading improving books. Whatever time she could steal from chores she invested in her own artistic and intellectual pursuits. Eustacia, on the other hand, enjoyed conversation and reading novels, but was happiest doing nothing. She liked to sleep, she liked to dream, she liked to muse and build castles in the air, sitting by the fire in the winter, or beneath a shady tree in the summer.
Although Mildred and Constance often castigated Eustacia for laziness, Lydia had formed an alliance with her, believing her younger sister was, like herself, of an artistic temperament. She encouraged Eustacia to forget her present woes by thinking of the happiness that would be hers in a few years, once she was married and the mistress of her own household. She, after all, had married well: a man who gave her a piano as a birthday present, and paid for private lessons. Their house in town was staffed by a cook, two maids, and a manservant, and there was a boy who came to do the garden twice a week. Lydia’s husband was not rich, but he was, as they said, “comfortable,” as well as being very much in love with his wife. Lydia was not so vulgar as to propose that Eustacia “marry money,” but her husband knew a number of young men who were up and coming in the business world; men who would soon be able to afford a wife. It was to give Eustacia a chance of meeting an appropriate mate that Lydia often invited her to stay and took her out to concerts, soirées, balls, and other social gatherings.
Eustacia went along with Lydia wherever and whenever she was asked, but wasn’t sure she believed marriage was the answer. She was not beautiful; more fatally, she lacked the personal charm that made men dote on Lydia. She might find a husband, but surely not romance. And even if she managed to marry a man who loved her, who was not a farmer, not poor, and not a petty tyrant like her father, her fate might still be that of her mother: to bear ten live children in twelve years, and die of exhaustion. She was not eager to exchange one form of servitude for another.
In the bedroom she had once shared with Lydia and Constance but now had to herself, Eustacia laid a fire in the hearth. The clear, sticky muck on her hands transferred itself to logs and paper but they burned with no apparent ill effect. When the fire was drawing nicely, she undressed and put on her nightgown. By that time she was yawning mightily, and as soon as she had crawled into bed she felt herself slipping deliciously into sleep.
When she woke the next morning her eyes were sticky, the lashes so gummed together that it was a struggle to open them; and it was not only her eyes which were affected. All over her face, her head, her hands, her upper body, she could feel the tight, sticky pull of dried mucus. It was there like spiderwebs, or a welter of snail tracks, criss-crossing her face, looping around her neck, her arms, and dried stiffly in her hair. She felt a myriad cracks open as her face convulsed in disgust. A tortured moan escaped her lips as she scrambled out of bed. The water in the pitcher was icy cold, but for once she didn’t mind, scarcely even noticed, as she splashed it onto hands and face and neck and chest, splashing it everywhere in a panic to get the slimy stuff off. It was not cold but revulsion which made her shiver.
Eustacia was not the excessively sensitive, refined creature contemporary manners held women should be. The daughter of a working farmer could not afford a weak stomach, but Eustacia knew that she was not so fastidious, not so “nice,” as her sisters, and this was a matter of some shame to her. Sometimes it made her angry. It wasn’t fair. Men didn’t have to pretend they were made of porcelain, so why should women? Perfection was unnatural. The body was a messy thing.
But not like this. This mess was not natural. Thank God, it proved to be easily washed away. Calming now that face and neck and hands were clean, Eustacia poured the last of the water into the bowl and tried to judge if there was enough to wash her hair.
There was a knock at the door and before she could say anything to stop her, Mildred had entered.
“Are you feeling better this morning? Ah!” Her sharp eyes saw something and the hidden worry on her face was transformed in an instant to something else, to understanding. “It’s your sick time, of course.”
“No—” But before she could protest, Eustacia realized what she had been too preoccupied and frightened to notice earlier. She felt the wetness between her legs, twisted around and saw what Mildred had seen: the bloodstain on her gown, the unmistakable badge of her condition.
“But what are you doing up? You’ll only make yourself ill. You want to keep warm. I’ll fetch some clean towels. Now, into bed with you. I’ll tell Pa you’re feeling poorly and won’t be down today. I’ll bring you up some toast and tea, and build up the fire in here. Well? What are you waiting for?”
She made a gesture below her waist. “I … have to clean myself.”
“All right. But be quick about it, don’t be standing about in the cold … you know a woman’s constitution is at its weakest at these times.”
Left alone, Eustacia realized that Mildred had decided there was nothing seriously wrong with her. The strangeness of hands exuding mucus had been redefined as a side effect of menstruation. No matter how odd and unpleasant, because it was happening now, when she was bleeding, it was to be accepted as yet another symptom of the female sickness.
She fashioned a toweling diaper for herself, put on a fresh nightgown, and got into bed. There was blood on the sheets, but it had dried. Why change them now, when she would surely soil them again? With five sisters she had seen how differently Eve’s Curse afflicted different women, even women with the same parents and upbringing. She wondered: could Mildred be right?
But Mildred didn’t know what she knew — that her hands had been cold and damp, sweating this strange substance not for just a day or two, but for more than a week.
A hand went to her head as she remembered. Tentative at first, then, frowning with surprise, she combed her fingers through clean hair: not clotted, not matted, not sticky, not stiff. Clean.
She got up to find the hand-mirror, to let her eyes confirm what her fingers told her. She picked her dress off the chair where she had hung it the previous night and examined the skirt. But although she remembered how often she had wiped her wet, sticky hands there, now she could neither see nor feel any trace of foreign matter. Her pocket handkerchief, too, was clean, although she could remember quite vividly the horrid slimy ball she’d made of it.
All gone now. Gone to nothing. Was it over?
She pressed her fingertips against her cheeks and brushed them against her lips. They felt cold and ever so slightly damp.
So quickly it had become a habit to wipe her hands whenever she felt them becoming wet. Now, half-reclining in bed, propped up on pillows, she decided to do nothing and see what happened.
Her hands rested on top of the blanket at chest-level. She felt a tingling sensation in the fingertips, and then she saw the stuff oozing out in faint, wispy tendrils.
Her skin crawled at the sight, and a horrible thought occurred to her. What if those slimy tendrils were now emerging not only from her fingertips, but all over her body? Those prickling feelings … She gasped for breath and held herself rigidly still, fighting down the urge to leap up and rip off her gown. She would wait and see.
The shining tendrils thickened and grew more solid. They took on the appearance of ghostly fingers. They were fingers. They were hands.
She thought of Mr. Elphinstone’s hands, and of the ghostly
form which had appeared between them, had appeared to grow out of them. Meanwhile, the hands attached to her hands grew larger still, and then began to elongate, to grow away from her into arms. She stared in wonder. So she could do it, too! Mr. Elphinstone wasn’t so special, after all.
But these hands and arms were not those of a baby. They were much too big for any baby. And there was something unpleasantly familiar about them as they grew into the chest and shoulders of a man. The head was still unformed, but Eustacia suddenly knew who it was.
It was Mr. Elphinstone, of course. He had done this to her. It was his wicked plan to come to her secretly in this nasty, ghost-like manner. In a moment his head would grow out of that neck, his face would form, and eyes would open, and he would look down on her and smile in triumph, his hands closing firmly over hers, his lips …
No. It was impossible. She would not have it. She refused.
Growling incoherently, she rubbed her hands fiercely against the blanket. The half-finished, cloudy likeness of a man still hung in the air, a face beginning to form. Once it had formed, once his eyes had opened and looked down at her, it might be too late. She might never escape his clutches. Feeling sick and furious, concentrating all her mind on denying his power, she swung both hands at it. She had imagined dispersing it, but although its appearance was cloudy, it was not made of smoke. Her hands sank into something horribly cold and slimy. It was thick and soupy, not entirely liquid, but not solid, either; something like clotted milk or half-set cheese, but worse; indescribably worse. It was something that should have been dead but was alive; something that looked alive and yet was dead. And it was cold — she’d never felt such a cold. Not a clean cold like ice or snow. This cold had the quality of a bad smell.
The feel of it made her gag. It made her head swim. But she persisted. Her fingers grasped and tore until she had pulled it to pieces, until she had completely destroyed the unnatural, unwanted effigy.