Staying Dead - Laura Anne Gilman [87]
The sky was splashed with pinpoints of stars, untouched by moonlight. The softness of warm air, and the sigh of leaves bent by the night breeze. A house behind him, lit from inside by bright white lights. Nothing felt real, or right. This wasn’t where he had been. This wasn’t right. He was…who was he? What was he doing here?
A tremor of panic wrapped around his brain, and he forced it away, forced himself to think clearly. He stood in the middle of the wide, sloping lawn, his back to the house, and stared into the night, oblivious to the pack of hellhounds circling him several feet away, uncertain whether to strike or not.
Where was he? What had happened? He looked at his hands, fingers open, palms facing upward, then brought his left hand slowly up to touch his mouth, his jaw. They made contact, then flinched away in discovery.
He had been a handsome man, before. It was a justifiable vanity which had made him take such care when getting dressed in the morning. Now, his cheekbone felt soft, giving way under his touch, and his pale blond hair was matted and caked with gore on one side, and dusted with cement dust all over. His worsted wool trousers were badly rumpled, and a rip in the knee distracted him for a moment, for he certainly would have recalled tearing his clothes! His hat was gone, his favorite hat, which he knew he’d had with him when he left…this morning? was gone, and he felt a moment’s worry about that—his head uncovered, like some young boy at play! His waistcoat was covered with that same gray dust as his hair, and there was another tear in the left sleeve of his shirt. That arm was clearly broken, hanging at a horribly awkward angle. But he felt no pain, wasn’t even aware there was anything wrong until touch and sight informed him of it.
He blinked, tried to organize his thoughts, tried to recall his last memory before waking here.
Nothing. Only the cold waiting space of eternity, a hollow pain that ate everything else. Think, damn it! Dust. Cement. You were on a site, looking over a project. Karl had been behind you, holding your briefcase while you checked on the marble slabs to be set into the foundation. Something had been wrong with them, one had been damaged…. And then the memory rose as though out from deep lake water, to reclaim the air—save no air filled his lungs or formed his exhale. No breath…
And it came back to him, a sudden screaming howling rush that overran his brain, knocked down walls and took up residence like a flight of harpies. Logic fled. Dark blue eyes unfocused, then sharpened again in madness. Where he was no longer mattered. What he had been no longer mattered. Memories consumed him, and pain, and the only thing which concerned him was getting back to where he had been. And killing the man who had killed him.
His battered, staved-in face was further torn by a feral snarl that had the hounds stepping back carefully, so as not to catch his attention. He strode forward, his feet planted firmly on the earth in the ground-covering stride of a man with a destination. But the well-manicured blades of grass poked through the dusty brown leather of his shoes, through the pale skin and bone. Not like physical objects might pass through a hologram, but as though two solid objects somehow shared space with each other, two universes meshing imperfectly.
Left behind, one of the hounds whined, a low, worried, confused sound. Then, as one, the pack turned and fled in the opposite direction.
The ghost walked faster, ignoring the trees around him, the wildlife that fled from him, his death-crazed brain throwing image on top of image, memories colliding with nightmares. The feel of paper beneath his fingers, of fine wood and cool glass, rough-hewed stone and polished marble. The sharpness of a knife at his throat, the putridity of smoke and burning flesh. The touch of skin to skin, the sound of laughter low in the throat and whispers and shouts of joy. The sensation of