Greyglass by Tanith Lee (story read aloud .TXT) 📕

was all right, and stayed all right, they kept expecting it all to happen again, despite what the psychiatrist, or whatever he was, said. Hence my dad’s awful little mantra, fine after nine. It was meant to keep the devilish bane at bay. To frighten me into suppressing – oh anything that might bring it on.”

Susan sat, watching Crissie, the twilight deepening in the unlit room.

Crissie looked down at the waxed floor, at her reflection in it. She said, “I know my mother was petrified when I began to have periods. She thought that would trigger everything again. But it didn’t.”

Susan undid her mouth. Then closed it.

Crissie said, “I’ve never told you this. It isn’t that I’m afraid of myself, I’m not, although I don’t understand it. Or ashamed, either, as I think I was meant to be. But not everyone wants to hear about things like this.”

A swift nausea wriggled through Susan’s stomach and mind.

What had Crissie done?

“This was the thing you said happened when you were small.”

“Yes. The daft thing is, I don’t remember any of it. Well, not much. Do you remember when I asked you what your earliest memory was, and you said around three, or four.”

“Yes.”

“Well I don’t have – how shall I say – proper memories, not until I was nine.”

There was silence.

Susan held the coffee cup, which had ceased to mean anything, though half-full. Crissie sat quietly, looking down into the lake of her waxed floor. She seemed as ever serene, perhaps just a little melancholy. And all around the grey-blue shadow bloomed like fog.

“Had there been an accident?” said Susan at last.

“Amnesia? No, it wasn’t that. Nothing happened. My mother had a perfectly ordinary pregnancy, gave birth, according to Dad at least, without much bother. It was a quick birth, he said, only a couple of hours from start to finish, they barely got to the hospital in time. And I was a healthy six pound baby, just a week early.”

The silence began again. It was like a noise, a recollected noise, but of what?

Beyond the arched French door, so reminiscent of Susan’s, the blue-grey garden sank into the space and oblivion of night.

“You see, I say I don’t have real memories, but I do have a type of memory. From the beginning, I think. I’m not sure, I never have been.”

And silence again.

This time it went on and on.

“Crissie, if you don’t want to talk about this, please don’t.”

Crissie looked up. Across the silent blurring of all things, her eyes shone, clear and feral as a cat’s, but colourless as a cat’s never were.

“I’m concerned that you might rather not hear.”

It was true. The hair moved slightly on Susan’s scalp. Suddenly, though she had never thought of it, or no more than once, before this hour, she recalled that they sat in what remained of the sunken rooms of the insane metamorphic house of her grandmother.

“Maybe you’re right, I don’t want to – but – look, can I put a light on?”

“You know you can.”

Susan got up. As she crossed the room she blundered against the table with the fruit bowl. The tangerines leapt and rolled away. “Sorry.” Then the light came on to her touch. The room moved from nothingness to a golden magical normalcy. Even Crissie’s books gleamed in the bookcase, the beautifully illustrated fairy tales, and books of photographs of India and Egypt, the Shakespeare in red and the Chaucer in black.

Crissie had also got up. She switched on the three other lights.

She turned back in her dancing, dancer’s way. “It’s still me, Susie.” It was not a plea, not a challenge. Only an absolute.

“Yes, sorry. That was just sitting here in the ’tween-light, greeking of auld ghoosties, or whatever.”

“It wasn’t a ghost,” said Crissie. “It was a poltergeist.” She stood on the floor, on her reflection. “Look, here it is. No sooner did they get the baby – me – home to their posho house in Kent, than things started to happen. At first not every day. But then, every day. The things that happen with poltergeists. Psychokinetic activity. Lights blew out, furniture moved dramatically, pictures flew off the walls, even some of the windows broke, apparently. My parents would hear banging noises, knocks and thumps. My mother said on one occasion something had mowed through the dining-room carpet – as if a lawnmower had gone over it, she said. My mother was the one, you’ll gather, who made sure I had all the details as soon as I was ‘old enough’. At first, when it started, they tried to ignore it. They got panicky. They attempted one or two solutions, which achieved nothing. Then they found this man near Harley Street. He explained about the phenomena. He said this happened sometimes round young children, even adolescents. He said it would stop. But they still had six and a half more years of it. And then – then it did stop. By then they’d got well used to it. Which meant Dad drank and went out a lot, and my mother was on tranks. The au pairs regularly left, too. Well, they would, wouldn’t they?”

“Yes,” said Susan woodenly. She said, “This was in Kent?”

“Marion Hill, Kent. Yes.”

“And you don’t remember –”

“What I remember is this. A kind of blaze without colour or light. Being furious and frustrated. I remember walking and walking through a sort of – well, I thought, when I was older, it was a kind of train tunnel. The light there was very faint, but I could see, and I wanted to get somewhere. Only I didn’t get there. And of course, how could I be walking in a tunnel like that, it must have been a recurring dream. I remember striking at things too – what things? I don’t know – but it made them shake, only I don’t think I did it with my hands. I remember being lonely in a way I never have since. I remember being in the dark.”

Again