Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [49]
I sat up, and she was gone. I rose and lit the gas, opened the door and looked out at the empty hallway, and in short did every foolish thing that may be imagined, all of them achieving every success that might be expected. That is to say, they availed nothing at all.
It may have been a week or a fortnight before she returned; I recall only that I had nearly been persuaded—this by my own arguments, for I had confided in no one—that the apparition had been a dream, the waking fantasy of an ill-ordered mind.
My master was in the habit of bathing before he retired each Saturday evening. Upon that occasion, his bath had not been ready at the accustomed time, this due to a mechanical difficulty with the apparatus employed to heat the water. He, being still rather in his cups, had berated me soundly for it, and had at last struck me a good, solid blow with his fist. I had suffered worse aboard the Jack Robinson, yet the injustice rankled. Thus I, who most frequently welcomed the embrace of Morpheus while the wick still smouldered, as the expression has it, lay awake that night staring at the ceiling, foolishly tormented. How might I have repaired the geyser, as the apparatus is styled? How might I have heated water upon the kitchen stove in more timely fashion than I had? Might I have lit the bedroom fire and employed that? And many more such questions, equally futile.
After lying sleepless for an hour or so, I chanced to glance to my left and beheld her melting through the door. Although dressed in nothing more substantial than an old linen nightshirt, I sprang from my bed. Indeed, I do not remember it, yet surely I did so, for I found myself standing and trembling before her. Should I have shouted? To this day I do not know; I know only that I was so unmanned by astonishment, and, aye, by terror, that I could not speak. My mouth opened, I believe. And closed, too, more than once. But not a sound did I utter.
I saw her as one sees moonlight, thin and lacking all substance, yet undeniably present. Did I think I dreamt? you ask. No, not that or any other thing; write, rather, that my mind was emptied of all thought, every thought having been driven out by fear.
She smiled, and my fear would have grown greater if it could. She gestured; at first I knew not at what, but when she repeated the gesture I saw it was at the stocking I had been darning while the light lasted. I had hurried the work, I confess, in the hope of completing it ere darkness fell; in that I had failed, and thus had left it, still incomplete, by the window, upon the only chair my room in that house afforded. When at last I understood what it was she indicated, I picked up the stocking and offered it to her. Let me say here, sir, and say now that there was no odour as of brimstone nor any such thing about her. Nor did she smell of grave-soil, decay, or the like. No, it was as though in that soft July I had winded a winter’s night, cold and silent.
She refused my stocking with a humble little gesture. Once, in Calcutta, I saw a child offer a beggar a stone; the beggar’s gesture was the same. “What is it you wish?” I asked. She seemed to endeavour to speak. No sound issued from her lips, not so much as a sigh.
“I shall do whatever you wish,” I told her, “but I must first know what it is.” By that time I was, I believe, regaining some shreds of self-possession. Fearfully, she indicated the darning needle, which was at that time still thrust through the worsted. I removed it and offered it to her.
She backed away, clearly frightened, and I recalled that the fairies were said, by those who feigned to credit them, to fear cold iron. I made as if to throw it out the window, but she hastened to prevent it. “What would you have me do?” I enquired, at which she mimed for me the thrusting of the needle into a forefinger.
I did. She bent and kissed my finger. The sensation was far beyond my meagre powers of description. At length she straightened up, licked her lips, and smiled. She had been