Ghostlight (22 page)

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Authors: Marion Zimmer Bradley

BOOK: Ghostlight
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Think. You can't afford hysterics. There's no such thing as magick. You've dedicated your life to that. But that doesn't rule out the rest of the paranormal. Treat this just like any other haunting. I only wish I knew—
“What's going on here,” Truth muttered aloud. She stroked the amulet through her sweater for reassurance. There were real-world explanations for everything that had happened here tonight. Light must have wandered into her room, found the jewelry, and taken it. Psychometry and Light's mediumistic gifts would go far to explaining the rest—she was only lucky Light hadn't found
Venus Afflicted
as well; she'd have to make a better hiding place for it than the trunk of her car.
“Truth?”
This time the voice was familiar. Light. Truth returned quickly to the side of the bed and took Light's hand.
“Did you see him?” Light said.
“See who, honey?” The unaccustomed endearment came easily to Truth's tongue. She tightened her grip on the small cold fingers placed trustingly in hers.
“Thorne,” Light said. “He comes and sits with me sometimes.” She yawned, as unaffectedly as a very young child. “I'm so sleepy,” Light complained.
“Do you want to tell me what happened tonight?” Truth hated to press her, but this might be her only chance to ask these questions before Julian spoke to Light.
Why do I think that? Julian's been nothing but kindness itself to me since I got here—and he'd never hurt Light.
Light regarded her with sleepy trust, and Truth's guarded heart surrendered before the innocent onslaught. Light was hers, blood of her blood, hers to protect.
“Thorne and I went down to the library,” Light said, unaware of the effect her words had on Truth. “He wanted me to get out some papers for him.”
“Why didn't he do it himself?” Truth asked, voice carefully neutral.
Light giggled, as if Truth had said something wildly amusing. “'Cause he's incor
por
eal, that's why! And he can't touch things, mostly, because it—” another jaw-cracking yawn—“it dissipates the charge, especially if there's iron. So I did it.”
“And then?” Truth asked.
“They burned,” Light said, plainly uninterested in further answers. Truth remembered what Julian had said about Light and questions, and decided not to push her any further.
“They burned,” Truth said. “They sure did. Why don't you get some sleep now, okay?”
In answer Light turned over, snuggling down deeper into her pillows. In moments her breath had deepened into sleep again.
Truth waited a moment longer, then tiptoed off, closing the door behind her carefully. Thorne Blackburn was dead. Like Marley's ghost, there was no doubt about it. And unless a more loquacious and well-preserved ghost than any previously documented in the annals of parapsychology was roaming Shadow's Gate, Light had not had the conversations with Thorne Blackburn that she'd said she had.
Come to that,
Truth
hadn't had the conversation with Thorne Blackburn that she seemed to have just had. Because there was, there could be, no Thorne Blackburn
speaking through Light—only a fragile mind crumbling away into madness and delusion.
Even counterfeit magick could be destructive to the fragile psyche. Truth had to get her sister out of here before more damage was done. She had to stop Julian from using Light in his rituals.
But how? Truth wasn't sure just how old Light was, but if she was Blackburn's child Light had to be in her middle twenties at least—well above the age of consent. While Julian could not keep Light here against her will, neither could Truth make Light leave with her.
There seemed to be no easy answers. If Light would not cooperate, what could she do? Truth could not bear to subject either herself or her newfound sister to the glare of publicity that would result if she tried to call in the authorities to enforce her whims. Perhaps even a descent into madness here at Shadow's Gate was better than the institutional cruelty that had left its vivid marks on Light's body.
She reached her room without incident, and opened the door cautiously. No one was there—though no one could have been, of course. Not really. She entered with a sigh of relief, and locked the door behind her. Then, catlike, she began to tidy away all sign of the room's having been searched, hanging up clothing and straightening dresser drawers once more until all that remained of disorder was the pile of books and notebooks on the bed.
Crossing to the window, Truth opened it and inhaled a lungful of sharp October night air. Below, the grass was green where the light of the house fell upon it, black beyond. She craned her head, but could not see the cupola of the center room no matter what she did. When she looked up toward the sky, she saw that the cloud cover had broken, and the waxing moon's silvery crescent was a bright spark through the trees. Half-full now, it would be full on Halloween, less than two weeks away.
When Julian was going to do his ritual, and trigger
God alone knew what manifestation of the uncontrolled psychic power of that underground spring—unless she could pull the plug on that power first.
She wished heartily that Dylan were here. Ghosthunting—and ghost-
breaking
—was his field, not hers.
“He can't touch things. It dissipates the charge, especially if there's iron.”
The echo of Light's words came back to her. Was this the clue to ending the hauntings at Shadow's Gate? Psychic phenomena and magnetism seemed to have some odd as-yet-not-understood connection that perhaps she could use.
Truth spared a moment's pity for Thorne Blackburn. She was fairly sure now that he'd bought Shadow's Gate after reading about it in
The River Where the Ghosts Walk.
Had he known how strong the psychic locus was that he trifled with here, or did he think all the reports of hauntings were merely trickery and illusion like his own? Perhaps what had followed hadn't been his fault at all, but the house, using him … .
Truth gave herself a sharp mental shake. It was bad enough having to investigate Thorne Blackburn without making excuses for him! A “haunted” house could not have a will—hauntings were merely expressions of personalities that had attached themselves to locations in life, with no more independent will than a tape recording! Ghosts—possession—discarnate spirits—all belonged to the shadowy borderland between parapsychology and the occult, a frontier that Dylan Palmer and Colin MacLaren were satisfied to explore and Truth Jourdemayne stayed clear of. She would stick with things she could measure.
As for Thorne Blackburn, he was hardly a candidate for the role of victim. Blackburn had ruined the lives of everyone who'd gone running after his New Aeon paradise, and even after his death his reputation attracted others who were more than willing to take up his discarded mantle.
Even, Truth conceded with reluctance, Julian. Julian, who thought of himself as continuing Blackburn's work—who sought to finish it even now?
And what would Julian and his followers do when they realized that their magick had not worked this time, because magick did not work, ever—
Are you sure, Truth?
an inner voice whispered, and even though she wasn't, Truth recoiled with desperate self-preservation from a world where magick was afoot, and chaos was alive in the world.
“Investigate the haunting,” Truth muttered to herself, beginning to pace back and forth in front of the open window. That meant cameras, recorders—delicate expensive equipment that the Institute wouldn't just hand her for the asking. Even Dylan had trouble sometimes convincing the director to let it off the premises.
Dylan. If she called him and explained, he'd help her. He'd understand when she explained that Julian didn't want anyone else here.
He had to.
Oblivious to what she was doing, Truth wrung her hands. Dylan had to understand, had to help—without him, she couldn't do what she had to do.
But have you ever given him any reason to help you?
an alien inner voice asked.
Truth slowed, stopped. Friends helped each other. Was Dylan her friend? He'd tried to be.
She
was the one who'd held back so that no friendship had grown—the way she'd held aloof from every proffered relationship for as long as she could remember. Now she wanted to use him, in the name of a friendship that did not exist—except, perhaps, in Dylan's own desires.
If that is the price, then you must pay it. Surrender yourself and make his dream real, if that is the price of his help
, the inhuman inner voice said.
We pay our debts. That is the law. Who binds us in obligation has bound us for all time; this is the law of the blood.
Truth felt the pressure of insight—or of fantasy; she could no longer tell—pushing behind her eyes, and forced it down with a fury mixed with terror, knowing it would merely come to her in dreams instead, the cold, unemotional Other that drew its strength from this house and the land it stood upon, that stood in the opposite balance from warm, human passion.
A passion Truth had always denied—until now, when she was offered the chance to root it out of her soul forever.
Truth groaned, sinking down onto the bed and doubling over until the gold medallion on the amber necklace dug into her skin. Human fallibility, or alien perfection—all her life she'd refused to make that choice, knowing that someday she must choose one or the other.
As Thorne Blackburn had chosen—and had chosen humanity, knowing it would destroy him.
“You're identifying too closely with your subject,” Truth said defiantly aloud, and managed a shaky laugh. “It's called transference. And so, when any sensible person would pack her bags and go screaming into the night, you're going to start investigating bigtime.”
She took a deep breath, acknowledging her fear—of change, of the unknown, of homicidal would-be magicians. First thing tomorrow she'd call Dylan—assuming she could find a phone that worked anywhere in Dutchess County—and see if there was any way she could get him to send her the ghosthunting equipment from the Bidney Institute. Then she'd see how Light was, try to have a sensible conversation with Michael, and—oh yes—try to continue the research for the biography that was the ostensible reason for her being here.
“Thorne Blackburn's message to the world: Don't buy any haunted houses,” Truth said aloud. She wished there was someone here she could talk to … .
Irene. Truth grasped at the thought as at a straw in a maelstrom. Irene had been here twenty-six years ago
when it had all happened. She'd known Truth's mother—and Light's. No matter what Julian had said, Truth could ask her about the children, about Thorne Blackburn—even about the haunting. If she could get Irene to back her up about the danger of the paranormal manifestations here at Shadow's Gate, she might even be able to persuade Julian to let Dylan come to investigate.
Suddenly, desperately, Truth wanted Dylan here, if for no more reason than that haunted houses were his field, not hers … and perhaps because she could not go through all the rest of her life cataloging last chances and lost opportunities and not seizing any of them.
She'd talk to Irene tonight.
The decision, once made, brought comfort and new vitality—it was action of a sort. Truth smoothed down her hair and checked her face in the dresser mirror. She looked all right.
Reasonably sane, you mean.
At the last moment she took off the necklace, tucking it and the ring in her dresser drawer. Then she unlocked her door and went out into the hall.
 
Time had done another of its odd slips, or else she'd brooded and tidied longer than she'd thought; the corridors were dark when she stepped out, their only illumination dim, widely spaced lamps on hall tables. When she glanced at her watch the hour was rising midnight. Now, where to find Irene? Her first night here Irene had told her she was just around the corner; and hadn't Julian pointed out Irene's room tonight? Yes; he'd said it was right under Light's, on the floor below, now if she could only extrapolate from that … .
Perhaps unfortunately, it was not too difficult. Truth rounded the corner just in time to see the door she knew was Irene's open and a man come out. Truth froze where she was, hardly daring to breathe. Staring.
His blond hair was longer than Fiona's, rippling free
and spilling down his back. He wore bell-bottom jeans, their legs flared with inserts of bright tapestry fabric, and a crocheted vest of multicolored yarn over a tie-dyed T-shirt. On his left wrist, where a watch would normally be, was a wide band, black in the dim light.
She knew that figure from a hundred photographs.
He pulled the door gently shut, his every move that of a young lover concluding a visit to the bedside of his beloved, then headed down the hall away from where Truth was standing, his step springy and purposeful.

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