Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [101]
Coleman’s shirt and trousers were warm, sticky, heavy with the blood emptying him. The library paled almost to blank, then returned. “As,” he said to Dunn, “as . . . a gentle-gentleman . . . I wonder if . . . if you . . .”
“You must be joking,” Dunn said; nonetheless, his bulk inclined towards Coleman.
Gripping its hilt as tightly as he could, Coleman slashed the rapier across Dunn’s face. As he did, something broke loose inside him and a tide of blood poured from the wound in his chest. He let go of the sword and fell beside it.
A thin, high-pitched scream rose from Dunn’s throat. Coleman’s sword had raked his eyes, and his cheeks were wet with blood and fluid. He had dropped the saber and held his hands up on either side of him, as if imploring some supernatural agency to his aid. Still screaming, Dunn crashed into the table with such force it jolted across the floor. He staggered back from the collision, lost his footing, and tumbled down.
The balloons were waiting for him. Their prisons ruptured, the creatures they had contained surged out of them and over Dunn. His vision was failing, but Coleman had the impression of something more liquid than solid, enough like a jellyfish to warrant the comparison. Dunn’s voice climbed higher, then failed. He clawed at the things on his chest, but that only allowed them to attach to his hands. With what must have been Herculean effort, Dunn sat up. His lips were forming words Coleman could not hear. Before he had uttered more than a few of them, one of the creatures spread itself over his face. His body shook as if with a seizure, then sagged backwards. In the quiet that followed, Coleman heard the noises of eating. Apparently, the balloons’ prisoners were capable of taking their nourishment more directly.
The library faded a second time. When it returned, it was less distinct. Coleman guessed more of his blood was outside his body than remained in it. How odd to die so quickly. How odd to die in a library. In some ways, it was as appropriate a location as any. He hoped that Isabelle had managed to get Cal out of the house. He had waited too long to take her concerns seriously and try to aid her; he hoped it wouldn’t be held against him. He wasn’t much of a believer in an afterlife, hadn’t been for decades. He supposed he’d been mistaken. He wondered what he should expect. Whatever it was, he hoped it wouldn’t be hungry.
XIV
From Benét’s Reader’s Encyclopedia (third edition):
Coleman, Mark Stephen (1842–1888). American novelist and short story writer. Born in Kingston, New York, Coleman left for study at Cambridge at the age of eighteen and spent almost the entire rest of his life abroad, living successively in London, Paris, Venice, and then London again before returning to the Hudson Valley in his final months. Like Henry James, with whom he is often compared, Coleman took as his subject the experiences of Americans in Europe; however, Coleman’s Americans are plagued by remorse of past sins personal and familial, a preoccupation that links his work to that of Nathaniel Hawthorne. His most famous novel is Belgrave’s Garden (1879), an account of a wealthy American’s attempt to cultivate the land on which his ancestor ordered a brutal massacre during the second Jacobite rebellion in 1745. Coleman’s death was notorious: he died as a result of an apparent duel with the spiritualist Parrish Dunn, who also was slain.
For Fiona
Afterword to “The Unbearable Proximity of Mr. Dunn’s Balloons”
Almost from the moment I received Nick’s invitation to submit to the anthology, I knew that the story would