The ragged grass which grew on its left-hand side didn't reflect the light nearly as brightly as the path, but there was light enough to show it for exactly what it was: a patch of waste ground, its vegetation already withered and wasted in anticipation of the winter snows to come. But even the path didn't reflect the harsh and brutal light as brightly as the fence which had been erected to enclose the Marquis of Membury's Garden. In daylight, the fence had been a very dull grey, and its patina of oxides had seemed a mere sprinkling of quintessentially uninteresting powder. Now, the fence stood out starkly and defiantly from its background, proudly radiant with borrowed fire. The tiny particles of oxide shone like white ash in the heart of a log fire, incandescent with their delight in the forces of entropy and decay whose vanguard they were.
Once, the trees at the edge of the stand had been filled with uncertain shadows by the coloured sodium lights, every branch and leaf ambitious to trail a deceptive net of darkness as it swayed in the wind. Now, they were condemned to the ebony uniformity of Stygian gloom, confined as though to a punishment cell by the sleek, stiff spears which stood to attention before them.
I stopped beside the fence to peer through its interstices, into the abyss beyond. I imagined that Maldureve was there, as completely concealed from my eyes as he was from all others, hiding from me as he hid from the world. I didn't think of him as being trapped—I knew that no cordon sanitaire could contain him, and that no phalanx of curved swords could repel him—but I did imagine him enclosed and concealed. The shadows were his sanctuary now.
I stared into the caged darkness, trying to see him, although I knew full well that I wouldn't be able to. The whited bars were too powerful. I strained my ears to hear him, but there was only the continual rustling of tiny creatures in the undergrowth: furtive mice and huge black beetles, going about their business under cover of the night, or hurrying to their refuges before the cold clamped down upon them.
'Anne! Are you all right?'
The question made me start with alarm.
It was Karen, on her way back to the hall with two of her friends. The friends were both boys.
'Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, of course.'
'You shouldn't be out here on your own,’ she told me. ‘I know it's early, but after what happened ...'
'I'm all right,’ I said. ‘Nothing can happen now.'
'Don't you believe it,’ said one of Karen's friends. ‘You can't solve a problem like this with cages. You can keep the freaks out of the trees, but you can't keep them out of the world.'
'You should make sure you're with somebody,’ Karen said. ‘If you hadn't ...'
She trailed off again, but this time it was diplomacy and not the desire to make the most of the dark implications of the unsaid. If I hadn't been so fond of going out by myself at the dead of night ... She knew that I had gone out, more than once, before the night I was attacked. She'd told the police about it. She couldn't know that I had gone to meet Maldureve, but she knew there had been something strange going on. She didn't dare say out loud that I had virtually gone out looking to be attacked, but in her private thoughts she must have wondered why it seemed that I had.
When the three of them resumed walking, obviously expecting me to walk with them, I obediently fell into step. But I didn't say anything more, and they accepted my compliance as a sufficient indication of my safety and my sanity. The four of us were still together when we reached the corridor where Karen and I lived, and when I saw the two people waiting by my door I became glad, at last, of the others’ companionship and protectiveness.
'Miss Charet,’ said one of the waiting men. ‘Could we possibly have a word?’ The words were polite, but they were hurried, rehearsed and overeager.
'No,’ I said immediately, as fiercely as I could. ‘No, you can't.'
The reporter looked genuinely surprised, as though he couldn't see why anyone who wasn't a corrupt politician, a crooked businessman or a naughty vicar would refuse to talk to him. ‘We only —’ he began.
'I don't want to talk to you,’ I told him, flatly. ‘I've nothing to tell you.’ I shrank back, bumping into the boy who was behind me. He wasn't very big—certainly not a prop forward or a weight-lifter—but he knew when his moment had arrived. He knew that there was glory without risk in a golden opportunity to tell the gentlemen of the press to go fuck themselves.
'Please, Miss Charet,’ said the second reporter, his tone hovering between plaintiveness and wheedling. ‘We don't mean you any harm.'
'She said no,’ said the boy, moving to stand shoulder to shoulder with me.
'We understand —’ the first reporter began.
I didn't want to be told how understanding he was. ‘You shouldn't be here,’ I told him. ‘You're trespassing. I want to go into my room. I don't want you here. I want you to go away and leave me alone.'
The first reporter's eyes flickered back and forth as he sized up the situation. If I had been on my own, outnumbered, I'm certain that they would have continued to pressure me, manoeuvring to cut me off and corner me, subtly trapping me so that they could blackmail me into saying something as the price of my release. But four was a crowd, and a hostile crowd at that. They didn't want a shouting match.
'Tomorrow,’ said the second reporter quickly. ‘An appointment. Anywhere you like. Please.'
'No,’ I said. ‘Nothing to say. Not now. Not ever. I want you to go away and leave me alone.’ I wondered if it would help if I became hysterical or tearful.
'You bastards,’ said the boy who had cast himself as my white knight. ‘She's only just come out of hospital, for fuck's sake. Can't you see she's frightened? Why can't you miserable fuckers just leave people alone?'
The first reporter opened his mouth, probably to say that he was only doing his job, but the other put a hand on his arm. ‘We're sorry,’ he said. ‘We didn't mean to scare you. When you're feeling better—ring us.’ He extended a card towards me. I thought that the boy was going to take it and rip it up, but when we both reached out the reporter deftly delivered it into my hand rather than my protector's. The two men were already moving away down the corridor, backing off.
'When you're ready, Miss Charet,’ the first one called, presumably trying to set things to rights, to demonstrate their essential reasonableness. ‘When you're ready—please!'
I didn't look at the card, but I held on to it until they had gone.
'It's okay now,’ the boy pointed out, unnecessarily. There was self-satisfaction in his voice, but he wasn't actually crowing. Not yet.
'Thanks,’ I said, sincerely. Then I went into my room and closed the door.
I was nervous about going down to dinner, but I was too hungry to skip it. I sat with Karen and the boy and their other friends, and talked about what bastards reporters were, and how they were almost worse than freaks and rapists and lager louts. Afterwards, they all hung around while I phoned home to tell Mum and Dad that everything was okay, that there was no need to worry about anything at all, that everything was under control. I didn't tell Mum that I had a posse standing guard on the phone box, ready to fight to the death for my honour if anyone with a miniature tape recorder happened to come into view. It didn't seem necessary. Karen and the boy walked me back to my room again once I'd done my duty, but that wasn't necessary either. The reporters had gone, for the time being. Karen invited me into her room for coffee and chat, but I told her that I was tired and needed to lie down.
'I couldn't sleep properly on the ward,’ I told her, by way of explanation. ‘It was too noisy.'
'We'll keep the music down,’ she promised. ‘No heavy metal.'
It wouldn't have mattered; I had no intention of going directly to sleep. I switched out the light and lay down on the bed, but I didn't bother to close my eyes, even for a moment. I left the curtains half drawn, so that the yellow light creeping up from beneath the sill cast complicated coloured shadows on the white walls and the ceiling tiles. I needed those shadows.
The s
ummoning wasn't easy; I was still relatively unpractised, and I think he had a long way to come, figuratively speaking. Even the combination of our efforts didn't make the matter simple. The path of true love never does run smooth, as Mum was fond of quoting, though it had never been entirely clear to me why it shouldn't. The path of her marriage to Dad had always seemed to run smoothly enough, from where we children stood. But my own paths had been extremely tortuous by comparison, and now that Gil was dead I couldn't honestly expect things to get easier. As complicating factors went, death was no minor hitch.
But he came when I called. From beyond the borderlands he came, brought forth by my eyes and my steadfast heart. He was wearing his stupid flying jacket, the way he always used to. I wondered whether the Californian borderlands were as cold and bleak as those which gave an edge to dreary Britain, or whether the ghosts which might be summoned from their depths would emerge wearing nothing but swimming trunks, with surfboards under their arms.
'Did you tell Viners?’ he whispered. His voice was stronger now, and I could see he contours of his face quite clearly. He was all appearance and no substance, but his presence was reasonably well accomplished. I knew that I could give him substance and strength; that wasn't a problem—but could I give him peace of mind?
'He wouldn't understand, Gil,’ I told him. ‘He's reached his limits and he can't go beyond them ... not yet. We have to handle this by ourselves. No one will help us. No one on this side, anyhow. They don't have the right mental equipment. Seeing is believing, and they can't see, so they can't believe. Even the ones who say that they believe in ghosts and vampires—their belief isn't of a kind that would be any use to us. I can't tell anybody. Nobody at all. We're on our own Gil: you and me. But we don't need anybody else. We can do what needs to be done.'
'No, Anne,’ he said, tiredly. ‘You have to make him understand how dangerous the virus is. You have to tell him about yourself. You have to tell him that it wasn't just me. You have to tell him that this thing is active, that the antibodies don't destroy it, that it hangs around, lying dormant, until it finds the lock it can open up. If you told him—if you told him everything ...'
'He'd think I'm mad,’ I said, a little less tolerantly. ‘It's no good. We're on our own.'
I'd got through to him at last. He shifted awkwardly, putting his hand up to his throat as if to test its wholeness. His eyes, faintly luminescent, were doubtful. I wondered whether ghosts could weep.
While he studied me, I carefully took off my jeans and my socks, and then my blouse. I threw them over the back of the chair any old how, because I didn't want to have to stand up. Then I threw my bra and knickers after them. I settled back down again, wondering how pale my skin might seem to a dweller in the shadows, wondering whether my flesh would seem to possess the texture of marble when he touched me with his spectral hand.
'I love you, Anne,’ he whispered, when he had found his voice again. It was what I'd been waiting to hear. I put my arms out to welcome him, and he drifted down into my embrace, as gently as an autumn leaf.
'It's okay,’ I told him. ‘This is the right way. I'm certain of it. Come inside me. All you have to do is come inside me.'
I wasn't sure, at first, that we could do it. I wasn't sure that there was enough of him. After all, I hadn't been able to do anything with Maldureve at first, until he had put on substance, and what I did with Maldureve didn't involve any actual penetration. I was afraid that making love to Gil's ghost might be like trying to catch the wind, and in a way, it was; but it was everything I could have hoped for, everything I could have desired.
He settled over me like a great cloak, unbelievably soft. The pressure of his body on mine was so very light, so nearly insubstantial, that it had a delicacy of effect I'd never thought possible. Always before, when he'd been a thing of crude flesh and blood, it had been uncomfortable and oppressive to have him settle down on me, no matter how carefully he balanced himself. I'd always felt restricted, nervous of being trapped and crushed. It was different now.
Now that his presence was almost without mass it was exciting without being punishing, erotic without being lumpen. There was no longer any hint of excess in his caresses or his kisses.
I'd thought that Maldureve was as much of an improvement on a human lover that I could ever expect to find, but the owls had taught me different. Now I learned that there were other possibilities too, that I'd hardly begun to explore the full spectrum of possibility.
I learned that there's no lover better suited to a frail girl than a male ghost. Penetration can still be achieved, by slow and patient insinuation, and the shaft of darkness easing its way into me felt infinitely smoother and more persuasive than Gil's actual prick, grotesquely bloated by the blood within, had ever felt before.
With Maldureve, that first time, I had felt as if I were on fire, bathed in supernatural heat which I could not help but liken in my innocent, inexperienced mind to Hell's imaginary fires. The pleasure which had swept over me had been tidal, surging through me in languorous waves and then ebbing by suspensefully slow degrees. With Gil's ghost, everything was overturned. The coolness of him was delicious, just cold enough to startle my nipples and the little hairs all over my arms and neck, but not cold enough to chill. The coolness was uplifting, refreshing, not so much beautiful as sublime. Nor did the pleasure come in great lazy waves. Instead, it was like a cool, swirling current from the ocean depths which caught me up as though I were a floating diatom and danced with me, drowning me in sensation.
I came; for the first time, with Gil, I came. I lost myself in the shivering of my nerves, the spasming of my muscles. But he couldn't reciprocate. He had no such resources. There was nothing left in his phantasmal form which was capable of climax. There was only one thing he could do, and even that he could not impose, could not demand. Nor could he have begged such a favour from anyone but me, for only I knew what to do and how to do it. None but I had the power of the gift, let alone the inclination to offer it.
I thrust my naked neck into the shadow-maw of his ghostly face, and made my flesh flow, opening a fissure where even a thing of such slight presence as he might suck and drink.
I gave him blood to drink, knowing that I was binding him to be my familiar spirit, knowing that I was leading him substance, to help him come from the borderlands more expeditiously and more effectively.
I fed him with my own substance, made manna of my own mass, and shared communion with him while I dwelt in ecstasy, floating in the afterthrill of my orgasm.
He bent his dark, wanton head and drank. He took what I offered, gladly and with love. That night, we became one, united for ever.
Isn't that the way it's supposed to be? Isn't that the one and only real happy ending? Isn't that the finest of all possibilities, which even coarse creatures of everyday flesh and blood have glimpsed in their most secret, most sacred dreams?
'This is love,’ I told him. ‘This is what we are, and will be, always and for ever.'
9
When I got up the next morning, one of the two reporters who'd been lying in ambush the night before was waiting outside my room. It was the younger one, the one who'd given me his card. I know I blushed deep red, because I was still in my dressing gown. I ran into the loo and locked the door, but knowing that he was outside, able to hear me, was horribly embarrassing.
When I unlocked the door again and peeped out, the corridor was empty, but I knew that he hadn't gone. I knew that he had simply taken advantage of the situation to walk into my unlocked room and sit down on my warm and unmade bed. It seemed like a dreadful violation of my privacy, all the more dreadful because there was nothing I could do about it. He wasn't a rapist who could be fought and bitten and kicked; I couldn't yell for help and expect people to come and grab him, handcuff him and throw him in jail. What he was doing was wrong, but the fact that he was a reporter made it understandable, a necessary evil. He didn't care that people thought he was the scum of the earth; he was probably
proud of it, in his own perverse fashion.
'Please go away,’ I said, holding the door open for him.
'I know it's a nuisance,’ he said. ‘But don't you think it might be better to get it over with? Why don't I go outside while you have a wash, get dressed, brush your teeth and put your make-up on? Then you can invite me back in when you're good and ready, and I'll sit on the chair and ask my questions quietly, in a perfectly civilised fashion. I'm John Mackenzie, by the way. You can call me John if I can call you Anne.'
He didn't mind that I was still in my dressing gown. It gave him a sort of advantage, a little extra power of intimidation. He wanted to use that advantage to get my assent to his proposition.
'I don't have anything to tell you,’ I said.
'That's not good enough,’ he said. ‘What happened to you is news. What happened to your friend's little girl is news. What happened to your boyfriend is news. Any connections between the three events, however tenuous or hypothetical, are news.'
'Is yours the kind of paper which prints words like “tenuous” and “hypothetical"?’ I asked.
He grinned; he didn't mind the sarcasm at all. He was pleased to get a reaction of any kind. He stayed where he was, perched on the edge of my bed, usurping my personal space. It was all a game to him, and he honestly expected me to play. He thought that everybody knew and respected the rules, and that my trying to get rid of him was just part of the ritual. He thought that I would follow the script in his head and give in, no matter how crass, stupid and intrusive he was.
'It's not news,’ I said. ‘The civil war in Azerbaijan is news. The European elections are news. The territorial disputes in Croatia are news. Even the prime minister's photo opportunities are news of a Sort. attempted rape victim's torment isn't.'
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