Ghosts and Other Lovers (5 page)

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.

Then she got out of bed and tottered across the floor on weak legs and threw up in the washbowl. Her head ached fiercely. She rested a moment, and then opened the window. It was a cold and windy day, and she was grateful for that. The wind would rush into the room and sweep out the nasty smells of sickness: the smells of blood, and vomit, and something much worse.

I've won
, she thought, weary but triumphant.
You haven't got me. I'm
free.

Mildred came in and found her leaning on the windowsill, head half out the window, shivering with the cold but still sucking in deep, invigorating breaths of the pure winter air.

"What on earth are you doing? Do you want to catch your death?" Mildred's hands, firm and controlling, on her arms. Eustacia resisted, refusing to be steered back to bed, afraid of the horrible remains she had left quivering and clotted on the blanket. "I felt sick. . . ."

"Yes, I see. You must get back into bed, you must keep warm."

Every muscle, every bone, every ounce of flesh still resisted -- until she saw the bed, clean and dry and empty, not a trace of the horror left.

She collapsed with relief and let Mildred tuck her into bed where, utterly exhausted, she fell asleep immediately.

Her body's only discharge came from between her legs, and that would pass after a few days. She was back to normal. She had won. She made a face at the Mr. Elphinstone in her mind, his image fading fast, and almost laughed out loud. She was happy, with four days ahead of her in which she would not be expected to work at all, time in which she could sleep and dream and read and think. Despite the mess and bother of it, Eustacia never minded her monthly visitor; on the contrary, she was grateful for the regular holiday it brought. She knew she was quite capable of working throughout her sick time, but she certainly wasn't going to argue with Mildred about it. Mildred thought permanent damage could be done to a woman who overstrained her constitution at such times. And a menstruating woman (not that such a word ever passed her lips) could do harm to others as well: milk would turn and bread not rise in her presence, and the scent of her would drive domestic animals wild. Modesty forbade a woman displaying herself when the curse was upon her, which meant she must keep to herself and the company of women. Eustacia thought Mildred was over-nice in regard to their father -- after all, he had been married and shared a bed with his wife for years -- but she was happy enough to avoid her brothers, and even more men to whom she was not related. The thought that they might notice something wrong with her was humiliating. She was happy to keep to her room and rest.

It was not until late that evening, after Mildred had taken away her supper dishes and left her an empty chamber pot and a bundle of clean towels, that she felt the tingling in her fingers again. She realized then that they were cold, and, as she tucked them into her armpits to warm them, she felt the dampness.

She stared at her hands and saw the mucus blobs swelling and stretching from her fingertips, elongating and thickening as she watched into fingers --

"No!"

Long fingers, hands, bony wrists -- hands she recognized.

"No!"

Denial was of no use. It was in her, and it had to come out. She thought she could feel it seeping out of the flesh beneath her breasts and behind her knees, and there was a tickling sensation on the soles of her feet. She couldn't keep it in. It had to come out.

It
had to, but
he
didn't. She stared at the hands and willed them to break off at the wrists. Two disembodied hands floated free, but more of the whitish matter gushed out, forming new hands.

Ectoplasm, Mr. Elphinstone had called it. The stuff produced by the bodies of the living to provide the dead with temporary flesh.

There were his hands, his arms. . . . But why his? Dead or alive, she had no wish to communicate with him. If she was to provide a habitation for spirits they should at least be shapes of her own choosing.

She thought about her mother. Her mother had had lovely hands, even though roughened by toil: slender fingers, graceful, shapely hands. As she thought of them, creating them in her mind, they were recreated before her. Cloudy, milky shapes, but recognizably
not
Mr. Elphinstone's hands. They were a woman's hands. Her mother's hands.

She gazed at them with feelings of awe and accomplishment, unsure whether this was her own work, or if she had her mother's spirit to thank for routing Mr. Elphinstone. She tried to join arms onto the hands, wanting to see more of her mother, but, as she struggled, she fell asleep.

Her hands stayed dry through the night, but this time she did not expect that condition to last. Indeed, her fingers were dripping like infected sores before midday.

She knew that meant Mr. Elphinstone was trying to get out. She didn't know exactly why, but she could guess: she had read enough novels. This was not the usual way that men attempted to overpower young women, but that didn't mean it was any less dangerous. Probably, she thought, he had been planning this from the start, from the very first moment when his damp, chilly flesh had pressed hers. She didn't know how his ghost could harm her, or even if it could, but she would certainly not give it the chance to try.

During the next four days Eustacia successfully fought off his every attempt to return. She couldn't stop the ectoplasm, but she could control the forms it took. It was hard work, but she enjoyed it. She came to think of it as a new kind of art, a sort of mental modeling, as if the ectoplasm had been clay, and she was using the fingers of her mind to push and smooth and mold it into the shapes of her choice.

At first, it was her mother she concentrated on, for her mother was the only person who had "passed over" whom Eustacia knew well or had any real desire to see again. But it was difficult, and not really very satisfying. Whole bodies were out of the question, requiring more ectoplasm than her body could produce at one time, so she concentrated either on hands (which were easiest) or on heads. Her mother's head was never quite right, and the more often she tried to produce it, the harder she found it to recall what her mother had really looked like. She was not limited to the dead, so she also created likenesses of Lydia and Mildred. But even the form of Mildred, whom she saw every day, was not really very like. The faces she made were just as clumsy and unfinished as they might have been if she had been working, untutored, in clay or stone. She knew who they were because she knew what she intended. She was not sure anyone else would have recognized them.

Unsatisfying as it was, it was also the most amazingly tiring work. More exhausting than milking the cows or laundry day. After less than an hour working on another ghost of Lydia, sleep would catch her up, inescapable, and she would slumber heavily for several hours.

Yet the energy spent was worth it. Not only did her efforts ward off Mr. Elphinstone, but they temporarily exhausted her supply of ectoplasm, winning sometimes a whole day of normal life and dry hands.

If she would do that every evening, if she would spend an hour willing ectoplasmic shapes into existence before falling to sleep, Eustacia figured she could keep her peculiar condition secret and under control. But it wasn't so easy. Perhaps it was laziness -- she imagined Mildred would think so -- but there were many nights when she was simply too tired to do anything at the end of the day but put herself to bed. She enjoyed playing with the ectoplasm, making faces and hands, but it was hard work all the same. It took reserves of energy she did not always have, especially by the time she was ready for bed.

Fortunately, she didn't have to share her bed with anyone. She didn't mind -- now that she knew the stuff could be washed off, or, if left, would soon dry to nothing -- the morning stickiness of the sheets or the mess on her body. Her hands were not the only source, if they had ever been. Like perspiration, the slime oozed from all the pores of her skin: from her legs, her feet, under her arms, her chest and back, even (and most horribly, because most visible) her face. Afraid that someone might notice, Eustacia took more care, forcing herself to stay awake past her usual bedtime, or waking early, or escaping to the privacy of her room on one pretense or another for long enough to do something with the excess ectoplasm.

But despite her best intentions, her body leaked, and, one suppertime, Mildred noticed. When everyone had left the table, she stopped her sister with a look and said: "You must be more careful."

"I wiped my hands -- and I did wash them before I came to table--"

"It's not only your hands, now, is it? You've left a trail -- no, don't look, I cleaned it up. Father didn't notice, nor did Conrad, but what if they should? Next time, I think you'd best take supper in your room."

"What? But why? How can I? Every night? Never eat with the family?"

"Of course not every night. But while you're -- during your--" she nodded her head meaningfully, unable to pronounce the euphemism.

"But it's not like that. I'm not--"

"Your
face
," Mildred muttered with a look of revulsion. She made small brushing gestures at her own forehead, and Eustacia became aware of the by-now familiar, chilly, tingling sensation from three different spots along her hairline. Both her handkerchiefs were already saturated, but she raised one, balled in her hand, to her head and wiped away the offensive trickles.

"Go to your room," Mildred said. "Clean yourself. I'll tell the others you're feeling poorly--"

"But I'm not! I'm not feeling poorly. This is something else. I don't know what it is, but it's not connected to -- to
that
-- at all. And it's not like a cold, something that clears up or goes away after a few days. . . . It's never gone away at all, not wholly, not since it started. It's a part of me now. Sometimes I can control it a bit, but I can't make it stop -- I can't make it go away." Mildred had never been her favorite sister; indeed, had they not been related, Eustacia was not certain she could have loved her. But that look on her face, even had it been the face of a stranger -- a look of horror, of loathing, barely controlled -- for that look to have been caused by her -- it was unbearable.

Eustacia burst into tears.

"Oh, stop that! Stop that at once. Crying never helps."

"Why are you so angry?"

"Because you're being silly."

"But why do you look at me like that? As if . . . as if it's
my fault
. You can't blame me -- I didn't make this happen -- I never wanted it. If I were bleeding you wouldn't tell me to stop; you couldn't expect me just to stop; you'd clean my wound and bind it and perhaps send for the doctor--"

"I shall send for the doctor. Not now, but in the morning. I would have done so sooner if I had realized -- but I can't think there's any urgency, if this has been going on all month, and you still walking around as if it were nothing. . . . Now will you go to your room, before you make any more mess? You're dripping."

"It's not my fault." Her tone was belligerent, but what she wanted was reassurance. Acceptance.

"We don't choose our afflictions," Mildred said coldly, looking away. "But we shouldn't be proud of them."

Alone in her room, Eustacia wept again. She had been very young when her mother died, and was seldom aware of missing her. But she missed her now. Mildred might have taken Mother's role as the female head of the family, but Mildred was not her mother. Her real mother would not have been horrified by the changes taking place in Eustacia, no matter what they were. Her real mother now would have embraced and comforted her, wept with her, not kept Mildred's chilly distance.

A pale, semi-opaque tendril was snaking out of her wrist when a fat teardrop fell, disintegrating it. Saltwater -- or maybe it was only tears? -- seemed to work more efficiently than plain water. Eustacia was so fascinated by this discovery that she forgot to cry.

After some time, she lit the lamp and sat down to write to Lydia. Downstairs, she suspected, Mildred would be writing a letter to be dispatched to Dr. Purves in the morning. Well, she would send a letter, too, on the same topic but from a different perspective, and to someone who would probably be of more use than a doctor. Lydia, after all, had seen for herself what Mr. Elphinstone could do. Lydia would be in sympathy, and she might know someone who could help. Not Mr. Elphinstone, but there must be other mediums -- perhaps even a lady medium? Lydia, with her wide social circle, was bound to know someone who knew someone. . . . If absolutely necessary, some third party might even approach Mr. Elphinstone in a roundabout way. He must have realized by now that his plan to take control of her had not worked, so perhaps he could be persuaded to lift his curse.