Blackwood Farm - Anne Rice [71]
“I was so devastated by Lynelle’s death that I fell into a state of silence, and though I knew that as the days passed those around me were concerned about me, I couldn’t speak a single syllable to anyone. I sat in my room, in my reading chair by the fireplace, and I did nothing but think of Lynelle.
“Goblin went sort of mad on account of my state. He began to pinch me incessantly, and trying to lift my left hand, and rushing towards the computer and making gestures that he wanted to write.
“I remember staring at him as he stood over there at the desk, beckoning to me, and realizing for what it’s worth that his pinches weren’t any worse than they had ever been, and that he couldn’t make the lights blink more than very little, and that when he pulled my hair I hardly felt it, and that I could ignore him without consequence if I chose.
“But I loved him. I didn’t want to kill him. No, I didn’t. And the moment had come to tell him what had happened. I dragged myself out of the chair and I went to the computer and I tapped out:
“ ‘Lynelle is dead.’
“For a long moment he read this message and then I said it out loud to him, but I received no response.
“ ‘Come on, Goblin, think. She’s dead.’ I said. ‘You’re a spirit and now she’s a spirit.’
“But there was no response.
“Suddenly I felt the old pressure on my left hand, with the tight sensation of fingers curling around it, and then he tapped out:
“ ‘Lynelle. Lynelle is gone?’
“I nodded. I was crying and I wanted now to be left alone. I told him aloud that she was dead. But Goblin took my left hand again and I watched it claw the keyboard:
“ ‘What is dead?’”
“In a fit of annoyance and heightened grief, I hammered out:
“ ‘No longer here. Gone. Dead. Body has no Life. No Spirit in her body. Body left over. Body buried in the ground. Her Spirit is gone.’
“But he simply couldn’t understand. He grabbed my hand again and tapped out, ‘Where is Lynelle dead?’ and ‘Where is Lynelle gone?’ and then finally, ‘Why are you crying for Lynelle?’
“A cold apprehension came over me, a cold form of concentration.
“I typed in ‘Sad. No more Lynelle. Sad. Crying. Yes.’ But other thoughts were brewing in my mind.
“He snatched for my hand again, but he was weaker on account of his earlier efforts, and all he could type was her name.
“At that moment, as I stared at the black monitor and the green letters, I saw what looked like the reflection of a pinpoint of light in the monitor, and, wondering what it could be, I moved my head from side to side to block the light or get a clearer look at it. For one second it became distinctly the light of a candle. I saw the wick as well as the flame.
“At once I turned around and looked behind me. I saw nothing in my room that could have produced this reflection. Absolutely nothing. Needless to say, I had no candles. The only candles were on a hallway altar downstairs.
“I turned back to the monitor. There was no pinpoint of light. There was no candle flame. Again I moved my head from side to side and turned my eyes at every possible angle. No light. No reflected candle flame.
“I was astonished. I sat quiet for a long time, distrusting my senses, and then, unable to deny what I saw, I tapped out to Goblin the question, ‘Did you see the candle flame?’ Again there came his monotonous and panicky answers: ‘Where Lynelle?’ ‘Lynelle gone.’ ‘What is gone?’
“I went back to my chair. Goblin appeared for a moment, in a vague flash, and there came the pinches and the hair pulling, but I lay indifferent to him thinking only, praying only in a bizarre way of praying backwards, that Lynelle had never really known how badly she was injured, that she hadn’t suffered in her coma, that she hadn’t known pain. What if she had seen the car careening into the truck? What if she had heard some insensitive person at her bedside saying that her face, her beautiful