Ghosteria Volume 2: The Novel: Zircons May Be Mistaken Read online

  Ghosteria

  Volume Two: the Novel

  Zircons May Be Mistaken

  Tanith Lee

  Ghosteria Volume Two: The Novel:

  Zircons May Be Mistaken

  By Tanith Lee

  © 2014

  Ebook Edition through KDP 2014

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people, or events, is purely coincidental. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  The right of Tanith Lee to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988.

  Cover by Danielle Lainton & Storm Constantine from an idea by Tanith Lee

  Layout by Storm Constantine

  New (future) Author Web Site, as the original has been stolen: http://www.tanith-lee.com

  An Immanion Press Edition

  http://www.immanion–press.com

  info@immanion–press.com

  Books by Tanith Lee

  A Selection from her 93 titles

  The Birthgrave Trilogy (The Birthgrave; Vazkor, son of Vazkor, Quest for the White Witch)

  The Vis Trilogy (The Storm Lord; Anackire; The White Serpent)

  The Flat Earth Opus (Night’s Master; Death’s Master; Delusion’s Master; Delirium’s Mistress; Night’s Sorceries)

  Don’t Bite the Sun

  Drinking Sapphire Wine

  The Paradys Quartet (The Book of the Damned; The Book of the Beast; The Book of the Dead; The Book of the Mad)

  The Venus Quartet (Faces Under Water; Saint Fire; A Bed of Earth; Venus Preserved)

  Sung in Shadow

  A Heroine of the World

  The Scarabae Blood Opera (Dark Dance; Personal Darkness;

  Darkness, I)

  The Blood of Roses

  When the Lights Go Out

  Heart-Beast

  Elephantasm

  Reigning Cats and Dogs

  The Unicorn Trilogy (Black Unicorn; Gold Unicorn; Red Unicorn)

  The Claidi Journals (Law of the Wolf Tower; Wolf Star Rise, Queen of the Wolves, Wolf Wing)

  The Piratica Novels (Piratica 1; Piratica 2; Piratica 3)

  The Silver Metal Lover

  Metallic Love

  The Gods Are Thirsty

  Collections

  Nightshades

  Dreams of Dark and Light

  Red As Blood – Tales From the Sisters Grimmer

  Tamastara, or the Indian Nights

  The Gorgon

  Tempting the Gods

  Hunting the Shadows

  Sounds and Furies

  Also Published by Immanion Press

  The Colouring Book Series

  Greyglass

  To Indigo

  L’Amber

  Killing Violets

  Ivoria

  Cruel Pink

  Turquoiselle

  Ghosteria Volume 1: The Stories

  The grave’s a fine and private place,

  But none I think do there embrace.

  To His Coy Mistress

  Andrew Marvell

  (1621 - 1678)

  PART ONE

  1

  The Scholar

  Elizabeth has said we all live in a yellow submarine. At the time, the young faces of Coral and Laurel looked blank. And the Knight, as ever, just looked bemused, knowing it was nothing he would ever comprehend, although he didn’t care so long as Elizabeth kept talking. I’m afraid I too didn’t grasp her reference for a minute or so. I’m that foolish combination, both too old a man – and too young – always to comprehend. Then I recalled it was a Ringo Starr song, a Beatles song, from way back, that fine band who reintroduced the world of popular music to many wonderful and, to my mind, classical musical modes, chords and references.

  But, aside from all else, Elizabeth’s statement is completely wrong in so many ways. Since it isn’t a submarine, it’s a house, though yellowish, I suppose, like a fading autumn leaf. Part of it, obviously, in the distant past, was the old fortress-castle that once stood alone here on the hill. (I hazard too ‘fortress-castle’ is tautology. Maybe not, in this case.) And we don’t exactly live here, either. ‘Bivouac’ might be a better word. Perch in mid-flight, between catastrophes, yearn and wait. But for what had we waited, we five, all this while? For Now, I think. For exactly Now.

  Egomaniacally, I’ll explain about myself, first. If you will permit.

  I did not, originally, reside here, but in a frankly bloody awful ‘flat’ in London – one room with kitchenette, and a lavatory in a cupboard – ‘shared bath’ down the hall. (Shared bath? I never shared a bath with anyone, except the tin one with my tiny brother, when I was nearly as tiny, he two and I four. We used to laugh and splash each other and swim ducks made of – was it? – rubber. While our very nice mother laughed too, and we were all happy. Dear little Eddy, my sibling, died when he was ten. Meningitis, rare and often wrongly diagnosed then, but still a possible. Then it was a bath of tears. Our mother died only three years after. Where did they go, these, my darlings? Insane, isn’t it. I am here. But where are they?

  However, although well into my ninety-sixth or seventh year, (I can never quite recall now which), I was still pretty hale and healthy, and despite being evicted at seventy from my post as Advisory Librarian at Murchester, (where I had had a much nicer flat of three spacious rooms, with kitchen and bathroom, plus the service of a cleaner called Mr Timp), I kept up my services when they were required. Mine was often interesting work, and besides augmented my rather frugal pension.

  I arrived at this house in the spring of 2011, and anticipated being here about three to four months, as the library is a large one. It lies, of course, in that smaller part of the house that is still solid, and until recently well-maintained. A curious combination inside of ancient show rooms, kept almost as when they had first been created, in the sixteen or seventeen hundreds, if not, actually, quite perfectly replicated. But also there were modern rooms, centrally heated and with delightful clean running water, flush lavs and electric kettles. Oh, those were the days.

  By the second week I was well into my work, and enjoying myself enormously, sorting out the rambling library during the morning and the evening, taking time before lunch to walk the – then elegant – gardens, or cautiously to explore the more ruinous other premises. The whole place was said to be haunted. I must say I’d never, at that time I was originally ninety-six or seven, ever seen a ghost. Nor did I, during those two weeks. But there were plenty of tales about them, even in some of the reference works I had been cataloguing. A man in a green coat upstairs, while a warrior in chain mail, he from around the 1300’s, was said to roam the ruins, maintaining sentry-go; he had even been spotted now and then over in the more – to him – futuristic areas, staring about him, it was said, in apparent puzzled fascination, at the real 17th century armchairs and the faux 18th century statues. A very young girl – or two of them – in perhaps Victorian dress were also said to appear from time to time in a corridor, or on the big stair that led from the hall. But I never saw her, either one, Neither any, in fact. Not then.

  Week three dawned bright and sunny with a splash of golden late summer weather. I’d planned to start on some of the very oldest books that day, tomes of colossal size and inclined to damp, for which, probably, they would have to be professionally treated elsewhere. The weather though delayed me. I went for my walk rather early, and rather long, and admired rabbits bounding through the slightly overgrown kitchen garden, their nice round m
ouths full of pilfered lettuce. The damsons were coming on well, I remember, and I ate a crimson windfall apple. Yes, my old strong teeth had stayed good enough for that. They used to say that how your teeth are, your bones go too. Although I’ve known plenty who lost their teeth and had bones of steel. Perhaps it was the reverse, in my case, but I’d had no trouble till then, aside from the odd slight twinge of winter rheumatism.

  I drank a glass of wine with my lunch. But then, in this house, I often did. Then I returned, about two-thirty, to the library, and started in again on those grand damp old books.

  It was the grandest, biggest and dampest, I’m afraid. A great monster of a volume, about one foot by one and a half, and a good four inches thick, covered in stained tobacco-brown leather with light mould in verdigris patches. I could just reach it without needing the library step – even in my nineties I was still just on six feet. I tried to be gentle, but it wouldn’t come, you see. The book seemed to want to stay exactly where it was, and rot in its own good time. You leave me alone, you old fool, it might have said. I’m almost two centuries older than you. Defer to your elders and betters. Somehow feeling this from it, I accordingly stepped back, and then maybe it changed its mind. Or I’d just dislodged it enough, I suppose. Right then it seemed like enemy action.

  Off the shelf it charged, straight at me, and into my upturned face. It crashed against my nose, and then there was an instant of nothing, only there seemed to have been a huge sound, rather than a blow, and next came the second blow as – thrown backward – my skull hit the thinly-carpeted stone paving of the library floor.

  I came to, as I thought, in the early evening. The windows were glowing twilight blue.

  At first I was dazed, then frightened. Any staff that were at the house knocked off about three o’clock, leaving me to my own devices. And here I had lain, unnoted, and presumably concussed, and with a broken nose – Yet, to my complete surprise, I was in no pain, could see perfectly well, was not even dizzy. To my anxious hands my face felt exactly as ever, and when, cautiously, I sat up, and then got to my feet, I seemed to have suffered no injury, let alone any trauma. I walked carefully across the floor, flexing my arms and legs, moving my head, breathing, I thought, deeply – and all was well. I was fine. Entirely still myself.

  It was only when I turned round to see what had happened to the huge old book that had attacked me, that I saw instead my own dead body lying, broken, on the Turkish rug.

  Situation Report

  The Terror began at the very end of 2019 – New Year’s Eve. By February of 2020, it was established and, seemingly ‘non-negotiable’. Who, after all, can reason with a corpse? Even a pseudo-living one. But by then I had, evidently, been for nearly nine years, a ghost – not remotely therefore in any way like a corpse. I seemed, to myself, or those portions of myself I was by now to see, (a view in a mirror no longer being possible), as I had become in my nineties. I was also the same height, ostensibly the same apparent weight, and of the usual gaunt if big-boned frame.

  The others too, visually, are like the selves they were in the days immediately before their deaths. But I’ll come to that.

  Meanwhile, what we could see of the Terror, and the – things – they that the Terror had coined, they were just as corpselike as all our own corpses must have become, after being carted off, (as mine was on the morning following my demise, once one of the poor house-staff had stumbled over my remains in the library), to a handy grave.

  There is a name for the creatures of the Terror, of course. They had been current for hundreds of years in various forms, but were thought to be a supernatural legend, an idea rather than a likelihood. Admittedly, quite early on in the 21st century, as I recollect – rather an amount of Science Fantasy literature, and even films (or ‘movies’) had been produced, based on the premise.

  However, it was quite another matter when one saw for oneself, and was reliably told it was real. Even the calm and frequently pragmatic Elizabeth let out a cry when first we glimpsed the advent on one of the house TVs. The TV, (like most of its kind), had a multitude of channels. In the old days these mostly conveyed a lot of pure rubbish, or – even when worthy in themselves – programmes drained of all sense or power by endless over-explanation, over-celebrity appearance, and attention-deficit editing – which meant any decent scene was over in fifteen seconds or less while, where commercially run, approximately thirty minutes of advertising had to accompany twenty-five of actual content. I had seldom bothered with any TV for years, unless I could access an old film – the original version of The Postman Always Rings Twice, or Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy from the earlier 2000’s. These, I hasten to add, on non-comm-channels. Post death, I thought I would not even be able to activate a button. For I had quickly found that, though I could touch my own body, this same body would pass through most objects of substance, from a table to a tree. But it seemed one could perform a type of telekinetic trick with electronics, which Elizabeth demonstrated how to perform, (she too did not trouble with the computers; she had missed their advent). For this reason of (presumed) telekinetics, we were able to turn lights on and off, and radios and TVs too. (Fairly predictably, we seldom attempted much else. Unable, nor needing, to eat or drink, get warm or cool down, bathe, or wash our garments, the relevant adjacent devices were of no use to any of us).

  To return to the fundamental point, nevertheless, (I have read, and studied, demonstrably too often among the more leisurely texts), we saw them. The Terror. The Plague. The Zombies. And that was exactly what they were, and are.

  Mankind has always died from stupid accidents, (myself, for example), or war, (the poor knight), or the wickedness of others, (Coral), or else by biological means – the normal plagues, (such as the influenza epidemic of 1918 that carried off the physical being of Laurel), or by our own despairing and disillusioned hands, (Elizabeth). After that, most of us seem to go on our own way into some other ‘life’, or to, one hopes, kind and serene oblivion. A few, for whatever confused or dedicated reasons, remain where we fell – or where most, or most significantly, we were happy. But the jettisoned bodies decay. They are – were – buried, or otherwise destroyed. The sensible dustbins of law, animal need, and time, dispose of them.

  Not so with the Terror. These things, patently devoid of anything that might be termed soul, let alone mind, roam the landscape, here and – by now, it seems – everywhere about the world.

  What they are, God (or if not God, maybe Nothing) knows. But an impulse they are, a brainless and despirited one, intransigently housed in a yet-operational machine of flesh and bone. Able to wreak havoc and death in turn. Able, in turn, to infect and annexe, swelling their army of the damned. Which then is ever intent to obliterate and amalgamate, probably, everything.

  They are the ultimate insult of some Satanic or Jehovan Curse upon the race of Men.

  Not merely to kill us all, but to remake us as the clay without the substance, the force without either conscience or true Will.

  Ghosts are not like these evil and disgusting unmanned tanks of Hell.

  Ghosts are only – heart and mind and, perhaps partially, soul; smoke and sighing, music and silence, memory, sorrow, and love.

  But the Terror is Hate. Lacking even passion to excuse it.

  2

  Elizabeth

  I killed myself because I could.

  Pretty simple, yes?

  I was happiest in my early thirties. A lot is talked about the 1960’s and Free Love, and the accessibility of the Pill, but it certainly wasn’t just that. I’d had a happy childhood, my mother a musician (piano), my father a businessman who loved concerts and theatre. They were great, these parents, attractive and clever and kind, which I gather is an unusual combination. Lucky little Lizzie.

  I did the pre-ordained stuff, but not university. I didn’t want to. I played (piano too) with a small classical orchestra up near Wales, and painted. That was my real need. Painting, and later, to a limited but for me fulfilling extent, scul
pture. I earned enough for a little town flat. But I had an income from my parents. (I said, didn’t I, luck unusually good.) My father’s benefice came via his Will.

  My dad died at forty-one. Heart. (The love of music had made it swell too much maybe – even back then, forty-one was premature.) My mother grieved but survived. Remarried. She lived into her eighties. In fact, (ha!) she outlived me by a couple of decades.

  I was born about 1933. (Funny thing is, I can never now quite remember if it was ‘33, or ‘32 – or even, ‘34 – but near enough.) So I was a kid, a ‘little girl’, when the Second World War opened its jaws on us all. And now, another odd thing. Because as a kid I wasn’t too freaked out. My parents managed to keep calm, you see, and that kept me calm. And anyhow, we moved out of London fairly soon. By the time I was seven and a half, (thereabouts), we were northwest, living in a little village full of dolls’ houses and sheep, and pretty as a flower, whose name, in English, meant Cherries.

  The first time I ever saw this place, I mean here, where now I am, was with my parents. We visited it, a site of Historic Interest. The war had ended a while before that, and we were moving again, but not right back down south, just southward somewhat, to make London a bit easier of access for my mother occasionally, and Dad a lot. I wondered afterwards if all that travelling, all those gaps of not being with us, helped make my father die. I was almost sixteen when it happened. I remember I’d bought him a present, (crazily his birthday fell only a few days after mine.) I kept it for years, the present, still wrapped up. It was a faithful copy of the original score of a Mozart aria, belonging to the Queen of the Night. Or... I think it was the QotN... Being dead can make you forgetful, and sometimes of those most special things you dearly want to recall. I don’t know why. I’ve heard the others say so. It isn’t just me.