The Ghosts of N-Space - Barry Letts [74]
The screams had stopped and all was quiet, but for Jeremy’s sobs of fear coming from the gatehouse roof and Maggie’s delighted giggling.
To the Brigadier’s horror, her face was alight with pleasure.
‘D’you see that, Alistair?’ she called up. ‘D’you ever see anything so nifty? Real neat!’
She walked towards the edge of the wall and held out her hand towards the great muscular creature, which was standing with its head down, licking the blood from its 258
teeth, the tongues of fire which delineated its body barely showing now.
Even in such a moment, the Brigadier’s trained mind was at work. How could a ghost have blood? he thought.
And yet he had appeared to have flesh, which could be as solid as his own if need be, so why not blood? He lifted the stun-gun. There was always a hope that it might have some effect.
‘Come here, lover,’ said. Maggie softly. ‘There’s my boy; there’s my beautiful boy.’
The fiend looked up at her with its staring red eye. It tossed its head; pawed the ground; and ambled over. It stretched out its neck, its foot-long teeth inches from her proffered hand.
‘Maggie! For God’s sake!’ called out the Brigadier in urgent warning, lowering the gun.
She ignored him. Making croodling noises like a new mother with her baby at her breast – or like a woman wordless with desire offering herself to her paramour, she reached out as if to stroke the ghastly head.
But before her fingers could make contact, the glow which surrounded the monumental body leaped into flame again and seemed to melt it in a fiery blaze.
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Still she did not draw away. She let her hand fall to her side and stood with her head thrown right back, her heavy lips apart, taking deep shuddering breaths.
As the Brigadier watched, quite unable to move, the liquid flame flowed into Maggie’s body, filling her, burning her up, consuming her with heatless fire; whilst she was moaning and sighing and murmuring incomprehensible words; and as she became enwrapped in a sheath of incandescence of a brilliance which hurt the eye, she uttered a cry of ultimate satisfaction that was almost like a sob.
The shining died. But as Maggie turned and looked up at the Brigadier, her face heavy with satiated lust, he saw her eyes had now become two pools of scarlet flame.
Sarah looked out of the window of Louisa’s bedroom at the garden two floors below. By the light of the three-quarter moon shining through the streaking clouds, she could see that the statue of Venus was still there after all these years, though the garden itself had been completely changed from a formal pattern of rectangular walks and flowerbeds, to a romantic dell of lawns and hedges, pergolas and pools.
In the middle of the left wall was the arch where she had been leaning while Guido told his tale. She listened to the tower clock striking eleven and remembered her frantic 260
rush to try to stop it. It was difficult to believe that it was only yesterday that it had all happened.
I wonder if his father’s thrown him out, she thought; and had to hold on to the windowsill as the dizziness of the years caught up with her: Guido had been dead for over three centuries. This time-travelling lark was more disorienting than flying halfway round the world, she thought; and it played havoc with your emotions. She took a deep breath to steady herself and tried to concentrate on what Louisa was saying.
‘I do declare, dear Sarah, the woods and fields are all so pretty in the springtime of the year, I’d happily forgo the gentle life and be a milkmaid – if they would but wash the cows. And goats are even worse – they like to smell, I’ll warrant.’
Louisa, who was sitting at her looking-glass trying on a succession of caps, peeped archly at her companion and continued, ‘Indeed, I know they do – for Giuseppe told me that just as you or I might sprinkle lavender water on our hair billy-goats make pi-pi on their beards!’ And she went off into peals of hiccupping laughter, until she was fighting to get her breath.
Sarah had been