Kill the Dead by Tanith Lee (beach read book txt) 📕

Thetwo sisters were very similar, yet Cilny had an elusive quality Ciddey did not,or was it that Ciddey’s elusiveness was more quickly translatable.

Shedarted a white raging glare about the chamber. She did not ask why he wasthere, or what he had done. She knew, naturally. She too would scent thevacancy where the dank perfume of the ghost had lain so heavy.

“I’msorry,” he said. He was not. It was a courtesy, and really just a facet of hisperverseness to offer it. For this was no hour for courtesies.

Thegirl reacted in a shocking, predictable fashion. She launched herself straightat him, actually springing off her feet towards his face or throat like anattacking cat. It should have been nothing to catch and hold her, but she hadacquired the force and fury of the possessed. Two nails raked down his cheekbefore he got her hands. Probably fortunately she was too naive, well bred orfastidious to aim for the traditional kick at him any street woman could havetaught her.

Whenhe did have hold of her, she struggled, struggles which ran down like clockworkas her violence ran out. Then she wept, and he held her through that, too. Itdid not always happen this way, but sometimes it did. He no longer bothered toassess what he felt at such an instant. Years before he would have identifiedregret, guilt, compassion; even self-satisfaction, even sex. But all thesetwinges of aftermath were basically meaningless. He let them travel theircourse, like the girl’s tears, mainly unheeding, completely uninfluenced. Itwas a kind of ritual.

Whenshe eventually pushed away from him as fiercely as if she meant to strike athim again, that was ritual too.

Shewalked across the room to the chair. She lifted the doll and sat down with it,taking it on her lap. She looked at the doll.

“Well,”she said, “you’ve got what you came for.” Her voice was choked from crying, butotherwise completely level. “I do trust you don’t expect paying for it.”

“No.”

Abruptlyshe tossed the doll off her lap onto the floor. She looked at the floor then. “Sucha great man,” she said. “So erudite. So clever.”

ParlDro limped towards the door.

Ciddleysaid, “I want you to meet someone who—”

“Don’tdirty your mouth with a lot of gutter phrases you don’t properly understand,”he said. “It won’t make any difference, to either of us.”

Shewaited until he was through the door, then she called softly, “Have you everthought about how many must loathe you, how many must wish you ill, want yoursuffering and despair? Don’t you ever feel it on your back, don’t you ever feelit in your belly, eating you alive, Parl Dro?”

Hebegan to go down the stairs. He wondered if she would call out to him again. Itseemed likely she would.

Infact, she waited till he was in the yard, going under the dead fig tree. He hadhesitated briefly. Starlight filmed the well as on the previous night and, ason the previous night, there still lingered there that intangible aura ofunnaturalness. Her voice drifted from the tower, gathering the aura aboutitself. The sentences fell like ugly fruits onto the ground. Her guttervocabulary was better than he would have anticipated. When she finished, he hadreached the gate, but though her voice was low, he had not missed a word.

MyalLemyal had presumably taken to his heels at some juncture, or else concealedhimself with exceptional cunning, for there was no hint of him within the yardor outside. Dro stepped back onto the road and turned eastward. The village,when he went by it again half a mile farther on, seemed unfamiliar and smallerthan before; he saw it with a stranger’s eye. Since tonight he did not intendto stay there, it had acquired the closed and unwelcoming facade of a placethat offered no shelter.

MyalLemyal had certainly removed himself from the scene. In his own haphazard way,he was as sensitive to the atmosphere of deadalives as any ghost-killer, thoughfailing to interpret them in positive terms, and with, very decidedly, nocompulsion to engage them in battle.

Hisneurasthenic fascination with the whole venture had, however, increased. It wasoften the case with him that what frightened him most he would run headlongafter—a habit he deplored but had been unable to break himself of.

Droalso fascinated and frightened him to a colossal extent. Myal, additionally,had convinced himself that Dro was an essential ingredient in the brilliantplan to find Ghyste Mortua, that—possibly—apocryphal domain of the undead.

Sowhen the house’s sense of manifestation and emotional frenzy were epitomised inthe supernatural shriek, Myal quickly pulled himself together and ran. But notvery far. He had simply leaped up the nearest slope like a scared rabbit anddropped in the thick grass there, panting and appalled. Ten minutes later, whenhe had dared himself to raise his head, he realized with some self-blind surprisethat he could still see the lopsided roof of the house below.

Itseemed inspired, then, to set himself to watch the spot for furtherdevelopments. The watch was not a long one. Parl Dro’s brandy and Myal’snervous exhaustion, combined with the sprint up the slope, proved conclusive.About one minute before Dro walked out of the gate and back onto the road, Myalwas sprawled, head on arms, soundly asleep.

Alittle after midnight, when the adolescent moon hung itself over his head likea piece of broken plate, Myal stirred, accepted the new mistake, cursed it, andfell asleep again. He too was not unused to slumbering on bare ground. But hedreamed first of his mother whom he had never known, and then of his drunkenfather and the leather strap known too well, and twitched and muttered andsighed.

Justbefore dawn, he rolled part of the way down the slope and came up against ayoung fir tree. Through the branches and the warp and woof of the grass, he sawa bank of pigeon-blue cloud barricading the eastern horizon, the light comingpale and mysterious above it.

Therewas no sound anywhere but the drift of the wind over the land, and the waterydrips and trickles of birdsong. Then a door slammed like a wooden drum, belowat the leaning house.

Myalstared down past the stem of the fir tree.

CiddeySoban,