Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [169]
“You might want to wait,” said Dorothea. “She’ll be dropping in again any minute.”
“I’m going up to the sixth,” I said. “Tell Jane where I’ll be, won’t you?”
“What about Miss Christine?” Dorothea asked as I went out. “Have you a message for her?”
THE SIXTH FLOOR was deserted, silent except for the oscillating hum of the new attractor. Workmen had not yet come to replace the iron wall of the chamber beneath it with glass. Curious, I opened the sampling aperture and heard from within a far-off roaring like that made by the shadowy creature. I detected movement in the corner of my eye and saw Christine pacing in front of the fourth chamber, wearing her emerald-green corset. I approached her cautiously (Richmond’s admonition about her had not gone unheeded) and spoke as I might to a horse that required gentling. This tactic had no good effect, for she vanished before I could reach her. Turning back toward the elevator, I saw something that froze my blood. I had left the sampling aperture open and from it there projected a well-defined beam of black energy or light or some other immateriality I could not name. It was as though a black sun were contained within the chamber and its radiant stuff had shot forth from the aperture to touch the wall opposite . . . and upon that wall an irregular patch of darkness grew, developing into a vaguely anthropomorphic figure that had the shape and size of a small headless child. The roaring had increased in volume and it was this, the implication that somehow a monstrous, whirling shadow was being beamed onto our earthly plane . . . that spurred me to act. I sprang to the aperture and shut it, cutting off the beam. The dark shape on the wall began to dissolve in much the way a puddle of water evaporates under strong sunlight, albeit far more quickly. Once it had gone I sat at one of the benches and sought to analyze what had occurred, but the phenomenon beggared analysis and I was too rattled to think. After ten minutes of fruitless deliberation, it struck me that urgency was called for. Eschewing the elevator, I pelted down the stairs to the second floor, intending to collect my notes and alert the others. Upon entering my bedroom, I found Jane standing by the fireplace, gazing at the dead coals, wearing the tartan dress she wore on the day I asked for her hand. I was eager to tell her all that had happened and caught her by the arm. She looked up at me with Christine’s eyes, the hazel irises revolving a fraction of a turn and back again. Seen this close, they no longer reminded me of clockworks, but had the agitated motion of the tiny creatures I had studied under a microscope at university.
I stumbled back and sat down heavily on the bed, staring at her in disbelief. I had no doubt the woman before me was Jane. She had Jane’s height and delicacy of feature, yet her stony expression seemed less at home on her face than it had on Christine’s. And those eyes . . . I tried to picture the pattern of darks and brights in Jane’s hazel irises, but could not bring them to mind. She came toward me, paused a foot away, and uttered a peculiar fluting cry. It seemed that she had difficulty breathing, though in retrospect I believe that the fleshly mechanisms of speech were difficult to master for the spirit who had possessed my fiancée.
She opened her mouth again and this time, with considerable effort and in a voice that fluctuated between Jane’s firm contralto and Christine’s higher, frailer tones, she said, “Have you come to frolic? It is much too early. We risk being interrupted at our play.”
This brief speech so horrified me that I remained half lying on the bed, propped up on my elbows, incapable of answering her.
“Yet risk may add spice to our pleasure. Was that your thought? Naughty Jeffkins!” She turned her back and lifted her hair away from the nape of her neck. “Won’t you help me with my buttons?”
I came to my feet and turned her to face me. “Jane!” I said, and shook her. “Jane!”
She fought against me, but I shook her again and again, each time more violently, and continued to call