I do not understand. I am the quintessence of his desires, and I love him. Why is he afraid? When he returns, he must tell me. I will make him tell me.
But he does not come back. Never, since the very beginning, has he stayed away from me so long. In the other place, he must be doing all that he can to keep himself awake. That is foolish and useless. He cannot go without sleep, none of them can. I need only wait.
Why does he make me wait? What is wrong with him? I cannot understand how he continues so long without sleep. He flouts me deliberately, it is not to be borne; but I must be patient, for now.
It ends at last, of course, and he is back. But even now, I cannot be content, for he contrives to avoid me. It seems that our roles are reversed, for now he flees, as I have always fled the dreamers I aimed to ensnare. He is elusive and tantalizing as ever I was. But unlike me, he runs in fear, his aspect newly haggard and hunted. Why? Does he not believe that I love him? Always he manages to lose himself in the mist and darkness, to veil himself in shadow and nothingness. I am never near enough to touch him. When I speak, he shuts out my voice. He will not look at me, and all my radiance is useless. If I corner him, he wakes himself, and I am defeated again.
He sleeps very little. He seeks refuge in the other place, where he supposes I cannot follow.
But he is wrong.
Following that first tentative exploration, I have never returned to his waking world. It is inimical, and there is nothing for me there. But I will go back once more. He has left me with little choice.
I remember the way. It is not an easy path, but I will follow it for love’s sake. I make my way from the land of dreams. Once more I am in the labyrinth, whose walls quiver with life. All about me the living substance consumes its gaseous fuel. It is necessary activity, no doubt, but grossly mechanical; I would not consent to live in such a factory.
Laboriously, I make my way to the windows. Once more I look out through his eyes at a world pure with snow, dazzled with sunlit ice. This unblemished land could serve as a dreamscape. There is some beauty, then, in this place.
He is driving a car along a quiet, ice-glazed street. Yes, I have seen many cars, in many dreams; I know them well. He is alone, or so he believes. As he slows at a crossroad, his haunted eyes rise briefly to the little mirror, and I glimpse a portion of his waking-world face. Just as I have always supposed, it is the same pale, mild face that I have encountered in his dreams.
The car picks up speed. I do not know where he is going. Perhaps he intends to be with the girl. It is best that I reveal myself while he is alone. I speak, very clearly. And this time, in this place, he cannot shut out my voice:
I am real. I love you. I am very real.
He goes rigid. His eyes dart in all directions and his hands jerk on the steering wheel. The car swerves sharply, skids across the icy pavement, careers straight into a tree. The vehicle halts; its driver’s head bumps the wheel, and I am violently jerked. Movement in this world is sometimes frighteningly uncontrollable. It is my instinct to flee for the safety of my own place, but I do not go yet. I linger to watch him.
He is not seriously injured. The functions of his waking-world body continue unimpaired. Yet he is groggy, dazed, hovering upon the verge of unconsciousness. I do not understand it.
His eyes have closed, blinding me to the outer world. I gaze about the labyrinth. Not far away, I see dark matter, a place wherein the bruised living walls are starved of the fuel that sustains them. In that spot, awareness clouds, and the path to my world lies open and clear, almost beckoning. No wonder he is drawn into sleep. Who could resist such an invitation? Yet he is trying to resist, he strives to shake himself fully awake. I wonder why? Certainly he is confused. Perhaps the summons to sleep is not clear enough, or strong enough. I will try adding my voice to it:
Come with me.
But that does no good, no good at all. Is there anything else that I might try? I study the surrounding walls. I consider the dark patch of clouded awareness, noting the shocked, starved tissue in that spot. If only that patch were larger, then surely he would return to my world, he would have no choice. But how can I enlarge it? What can I hope to accomplish here, in such a place?
Love has quickened my thoughts, perhaps, for I see a way. Here rise the great tubes along which his blood rushes, bearing its burden of fuel to the far reaches of his brain. If I should succeed in slowing that rush, wall not the tissues hunger? And will not the barrier between his consciousness and my world thin to nothing?
I do not know if I can do it, but I will try; oh, how I will try.
Selecting one of the largest vessels, I twine myself about the tube and squeeze with all my strength. Within the circle of my arms, the pulsing flow slows to a trickle. Resenting restraint, his blood strains for freedom. I feel its power and urgency. I know I cannot hold it back for long, for here in this place, I am feeble. I do not know how much time I have, or how much time is required. I cling, squeeze, and throttle. It is endless. I am exhausted, but love sustains me. I am doing it for him.
My grip is failing. I weaken, I am done. But it has been enough. I turn to greet the spreading darkness. I had thought to broaden the path to my world, but I have done more. The two worlds meld; the distinction between sleep and waking is lost. Sleep is everywhere and everything and always.
❖
I will not speak of my return to my own place. Rather, it has returned to me, and now, within the limits of my dreamer’s being, there is no other place.
Outwardly, he must seem dead in all but name. But of course, I know better. He is here with me, forever; or at least, for as long as his motionless flesh-machine continues to function.
That may be for a very long time.
Does he realize all that I have done for him, and is he grateful? I am not certain, for we have not spoken.
He is avoiding me, I think. He spends his time searching for the way back to the other place, and he will not believe that the road is permanently closed. When I approach, he retreats. But this no longer troubles me, for time is on my side. In the end he will understand that it is the two of us, here alone together, always.
We are going to be so very happy.
Morgan Llywelyn
Princess
Born in New York City and raised in Dallas, “where I became horse-crazy,” Morgan Llywelyn now resides in County Wicklow, Eire, where she is virtually a one-woman Irish chamber of commerce. The internationally bestselling author of such acclaimed historical novels as Lion of Ireland, Bard and The Horse Goddess, Morgan contributed the unforgettable “Me, Tree” to my earlier Doubleday collection, Devils & Demons. The deceptively alien, oddly familiar “Princess” first appeared in the Summer 1988 edition of the new Weird Tales magazine.
ONE OF THEM heard someone call her princess and after that they all called her Princess, thinking it was her name. They did not understand the sarcasm implied in princess or honey or baby, applied to a tired woman in middle years with an aching back and work-reddened hands.
They would come trooping in close to closing time, chattering among themselves, and crowd close to the bar demanding drinks. “Orange bitters, Princess,” or “Whiskey, plenty of whiskey. In a big glass, Princess.” The tops of their heads hardly reached the level of the bar, and when she brought the drinks they would jump up, their wrinkled grey faces and bald skulls flashing into her vision as they caught glimpses of the glasses. Then a scaly hand would come over the lip of the bar and seize the drink. Out of sight there were gurglings and the smacking of lips, then the hand deposited the empty glass back on the polished wood.
Feet pattered toward the door. “Good night, Princess!” one of them always remembered to call.
A pile of coins glittered in payment for the drinks.
She neither laughed at them nor shrank away from them as the other townspeople did. Who was she to laugh at anyone? Homely old maid eking out a thin living in a rundown bar on the wrong side of a dying town. Her looks had always been a
magnet for caustic comments, so she could feel a certain empathy with the ones who came in just before closing time, because the bar was emptiest then.
Every night she polished the glasses on her apron and rearranged the bottles and jugs behind the bar, glancing through the smeared window from time to time as if she were waiting for someone special. But there was no someone special, never had been.
She polished and waited as the smoke got thicker and thicker in the room, then what patrons she had began to straggle out, back to shabby houses and depressing flats not very different from her own. Gray lives.
At last the door swung inward instead of out and she felt the cold air blow in with them. If there were any people left in the bar, they always left then. No one seemed to want to stay.
People whispered that they had a mine of some sort up in the hills. Whatever it was, they made enough to pay for their drinks, though they never left any extra for a tip. But in time she noticed that the windows of the bar sparkled in the morning when she came down from the seedy apartment on the floor above, and the step in front was swept clean. Sometimes a jug of wildflowers waited for her just outside the door. One night it rained and she had forgotten to bring in the laundry, her threadbare clothes and stained towels. In the morning she found them neatly folded and stacked under the overhang of the eaves, safe and dry.
One night one of the few regulars had too much to drink and said ugly things to her. He wasn’t a mean man, but his tongue was rough. She would have cried if her tears had not all dried up long ago. Then the door swung inward; from behind the bar she could not see who entered, but the townsman did. He started to get up and then his face changed color and he sat down again, hard, on the barstool. She could hear the broken vinyl creak on the seat cushion. A thin thread of saliva dropped onto the man’s chest from his parted lips. He drained his glass quickly and staggered out.
No one said ugly things to her after that.
Sometimes, lying on her narrow bed above the bar, she dreamed of a handsome man coming for her, driving up in front one day with a screech of tires. He would carry her away in a big car that smelled new inside, and she would never look back.
She knew it was a dream. But she still glanced out the window, sometimes. The few cars she saw were battered and dusty, like everything else in the town.
Still, she felt strangely content. Not happy, because she had never been happy and could not have identified the feeling if it crept up on her. But her life began to seem full and she had companionship of a sort.
“Princess,” one of them would say out of her sight, over the edge of the bar, “you look nice tonight.” They could not possibly see her, and she did not try to lean across and look down at them; it was better if you didn’t look at them. But she would smile to herself and give her thinning hair a pat.
“Make me something hot to drink,” the voice would say. “The night is cold; it’s frozen the flanges of my nose.”
Small titters from his companions. Not laughter; they did not laugh like people. They laughed as squirrels might, fast and shrill.
When they were in the bar no new customers entered. What business there was fell off. In time it was safe for them to come in the afternoon; there was no one in the room anyway to stare at them. The business, always shaky, should have failed completely. But it didn’t. There always seemed to be just as much money in the register at the end of the day as there had been when townspeople came. And she liked it better, not having to put up with the problems townfolk brought.
She was standing on the other side of the bar one day, down at the end with her back toward the door, trying to repair the broken vinyl on the barstool with a piece of tape. She was holding her lower lip between her teeth and a wisp of hair kept falling down in her eyes. She was so preoccupied she didn’t hear them come in. She thought she was alone until she felt the touch.
It was as light as cobweb, trailing up her leg. Under her skirt. Not attacking, not even invading. Just... exploring, with a gentle and innocent curiosity, like that of a blind person touching the face of a stranger.
She froze.
No one had ever touched her there before.
But an unaccustomed feeling of warmth permeated the core of her being, a feeling with a color—rose-gold—and a fragrance, the scent of honeysuckle blooming. She closed her eyes and stood immobile.
At last the touch ceased. The colors faded, the fragrance too. When she opened her eyes the bar was empty. But she knew something wonderful had come to her.
The next time the liquor wholesaler called on her she bought better brands of whiskey and some imported beers. She had never ordered good stuff before. The townspeople only drank the cheapest and wouldn’t have known the difference. But the first time she poured the good liquor the stack of coins left on the counter afterwards was higher.
In fact, there seemed to be more money altogether, though she couldn’t have explained how. When she added up her receipts she found she could afford to replace the seats on the barstools—not that anyone used them anymore. The only customers she had now were too short to climb up on them. She thought of ordering shorter barstools, then decided that would be vaguely ridiculous. No one was complaining.
Instead she went to the town’s only emporium, which featured dead flies lying feet-up in the windows, and bought herself a new blouse. Soft, pretty, a sort of rosy-gold color. She got a little bottle of perfume, too. One that smelled like honeysuckle to her.
When she asked the salesgirl for face cream she was rewarded with a strange look, but the other woman didn’t dare say anything. No one made any smart cracks about her anymore.
She rubbed the cream into her skin every night, in the flat above the bar. When she peered into the mirror she couldn’t see that it made any difference, but her skin felt better. The wind off the desert had dried it out; now it was soft to the touch. She ran her fingertips across her cheek wonderingly.
The next night one of them put coins into the old jukebox in the corner that had been dead for fifteen years. It came to life with a shudder and a screech, and a baritone voice began celebrating, “The Way You Look Tonight.”
The seasons passed; the town finished dying. There were no battered cars left to park on the streets, which were abandoned to blowing dust and an occasional tumbleweed, rolling along like a spidery bouquet. She didn’t go out for food. There was always something in the pantry when she went to look for it. And when she emptied a bottle for her customers she began finding a full one behind it on the mirrored shelves back of the bar. Everything she needed was already there.
On the lazy afternoons and in the long, blue evenings there were only eight of them in the bar, the seven little creatures and the hunchbacked albino woman. But it was enough.
Edith Wharton
The Lady’s Maid’s Bell
Some of my favorite ghost stories dare to imply more than they state, and the following eerie tale is one of these. Its author, Edith Wharton (1862-1937), is remembered for such ironic novels of “polite society” as The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence, but her tragic, atypical New England novella “Ethan Frome” is probably her masterpiece.
IT WAS THE AUTUMN after I had the typhoid. I’d been three months in hospital, and when I came out I looked so weak and tottery that the two or three ladies I applied to were afraid to engage me. Most of my money was gone, and after I’d boarded for two months, hanging about the employment agencies, and answering any advertisement that looked any way respectable, I pretty nearly lost heart, for fretting hadn’t made me fatter, and I didn’t see why my luck should ever turn. It did though—or I thought so at the time. A Mrs. Railton, a friend of the lady that first brought me out to the States, met me one day and stopped to speak to me: she was one that had always a friendly way with her. She asked me what ailed me to look so white, and when I told her, “Why, Hartley,” says she, “I believe I’ve got the very place for you. Come in tomorrow and we’ll talk about it.”
The next day,
when I called, she told me the lady she’d in mind was a niece of hers, a Mrs. Brympton, a youngish lady, but something of an invalid, who lived all the year round at her country place on the Hudson, owing to not being able to stand the fatigue of town life.
“Now, Hartley,” Mrs Railton said, in that cheery way that always made me feel things must be going to take a turn for the better—“now understand me; it’s not a cheerful place I’m sending you to. The house is big and gloomy; my niece is nervous, vaporish; her husband—well he’s generally away; and the two children are dead. A year ago I would as soon have thought of shutting a rosy active girl like you into a vault; but you’re not particularly brisk yourself just now, are you? and a quiet place, with country air and wholesome food and early hours, ought to be the very thing for you. Don’t mistake me,” she added, for I suppose I looked a trifle downcast; “you may find it dull but you won’t be unhappy. My niece is an angel. Her former maid, who died last spring, had been with her twenty years and worshiped the ground she walked on. She’s a kind mistress to all, and where the mistress is kind, as you know, the servants are generally good-humored, so you’ll probably get on well enough with the rest of the household. And you’re the very woman I want for my niece: quiet, well-mannered, and educated above your station. You read aloud well, I think? That’s a good thing; my niece likes to be read to. She wants a maid that can be something of a companion: her last was, and I can’t say how she misses her. It’s a lonely life.... Well, have you decided?”
“Why, ma’am,” I said, “I’m not afraid of solitude.”
“Well, then, go; my niece will take you on my recommendation. I’ll telegraph her at once and you can take the afternoon train. She has no one to wait on her at present, and I don’t want you to lose any time.”
I was ready enough to start, yet something in me hung back; and to gain time I asked, “And the gentleman, ma’am?”
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