Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [176]
Jane and I were married in May of the year, and that same summer I opened a clinic in Swansea where I treat the disadvantaged; yet I do so absent the enthusiasm that once I had for the task. I doubt the worth of charity and justice, those values that underscore the work, and find it difficult to reconcile the conviction needed to perform my duties with my loss of faith in the good.
Over the ensuing six years I have taken to writing fiction. Using details gathered during my months on Rose Street, I have gained a wide readership for my ghost stories, which are written with an excess of detachment yet are often praised for their passionate expression. However, the true function of these fictions is self-examination, the same as when I peer into mirrors, looking for shadows in my eyes, afraid that my encounter with that darkness in the cloud of ghosts has infected me and is—despite its apparent state of bliss—responsible for my despairing outlook. Sometimes I remove Richmond’s notebooks from the hidden drawer in my desk and go through page after page of equations and technical gibberish, as indecipherable as hieroglyphs, hoping they will magically spark some insight into the essence of that darkness. The feeling of joy it transmitted when I brushed against it, so at odds with its terrible aspect . . . Was joy its natural state? Was that emotion a tool of the divine? Did it signal the opening of a portal into heaven or was it the lure of a devil? Did it offer a sweet oblivion to the revenants of Saint Nichol, a state counterfeited by Richmond’s attractors, which instead acted to destroy them? That might explain why they flocked to the rooftop, and it might explain as well why Christine did not hide from it—I may have misinterpreted her presence on the roof. I suspect if I could fathom that mystery, I would understand everything. Perhaps we are all of us either attractors searching for ghosts upon which to feed or ghosts seeking oblivion. And perhaps the salient difference between the spirit world and this one is that here we can be both.
Jane is the single truth in my life, its sole constant. I have no reason to mistrust her affections, yet I often construct scenarios that paint our marriage as the endgame of an elaborate hoax. When I tell her about them (I tell her everything), she is amused and chides me for being so dismal. For instance, the other day, a sunny day with a salt breeze, as we walked in the green hills above the beach at Pwll Du, she responded to my latest fabrication by saying, “I had to labor at it, else you might have escaped my clutches.” She glanced at me with mischief in her eyes and said, “Seducing you was no easy task.”
“As I remember, it was I who seduced you.”
“Oh, please!” She gave me a pitying look. “After you rejected me that first night, we stayed up all hours, Dorothea and I, plotting your downfall.”
“You consulted with Dorothea?”
“It was her idea that I dress as I did on the following night. She thought if I wore matronly bedclothes it might put you at ease. And she lent me her robe. You may recall that it fit me rather snugly.”
“The crinoline bonnet,” I said. “That almost put me off.”
“Yes, I suppose that was a bit much. We debated whether or not to employ it.”
“Why did you . . . ?” I left the question unstated, but she finished it for me.
“Why did I seduce you?”
I nodded.
“Because you were beautiful,” she said. “Because you were sweet . . . and kind.”
“Beautiful, perhaps,” I said, and smiled. “But these days I don’t feel especially kind or sweet.”
“You’re still the man I fell in love with.”
“Not so naïve as that man, perhaps.”
She blocked my path, preventing me from walking onward. “You’re getting better, Samuel. You may not recognize it, but . . .”
“I don’t,” I said.