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

“Cilnywould be jealous. My sister would hate me, in bed with a man.” Then, miles ofdeep and delicious and passionless kisses later: “You mustn’t try to have me. I’ma virgin.”

Obviouslyshe had died a virgin, she could not lose her virginity after death. But hefelt only the sort of dislocated concupiscence that came in fever dreams, andwas unable to, or undesirous of, acting on it. In a dreary way, the sexuallimbo was very pleasant. Certainly he did not want to stop embracing her, justas he did not want to intensify the embraces.

Then,languidly, between the long, long, purposeless kisses, they began to talk.

“Ithink I’m dead,” he said. “I really must be.”

“Ssh.Don’t. Kiss me. You’re not dead.”

“Butthat’s—mmm—yes, that’s how I know. But I want to ask you—”

“No.Don’t ask me. Kiss.”

“Yes.Oh Ciddey.... I want to ask you about the musical instrument. About the link.”

“Myal....”

“It’smy link to life. And Parl Dro’s got it And he’s coming here because—well,because I just suppose he’s a ghost-killer and he’s obsessed with Tulotef, sohe’ll have to come here. But why you?”

“Why?Darling—”

“Darling.Why is the instrument your link, too?”

“Soclever. Myal Lemyal’s so clever. And so lovely.”

“Ciddey—Iwish you’d tell me.”

“Iwill. You’re only riffraff, but I love you. There, I’ve told.”

“Droburnt your shoe. And there was nothing else I had that could have been yours. Idon’t see how the instrument my father murdered a man to get can have anythingto do with you. But it does. I was your energy source to get back, and yourhatred of Dro was your motive. But the instrument was the link.”

“Soclever. How did you know? Ah—”

“Oh—Iplayed a song to you on it in my sleep, and you arrived. When I played itbackwards you went away. And when I went with you into the wood, I took it withme, or I thought I did. And when we were here, you wanted it played. When yourealised it was an illusion, you were afraid—”

“Stopit. I don’t want to discuss it. Kiss me.”

“Yes...Ciddey? Let’s stop pretending we’re alive. It can’t hurt if we tell the truthto each other.”

“I loveyou.”

“Ilove you, too. Only I’ll wish I hadn’t said it now. Because I don’t. At least—”

“Myal—”

Fora long while then there was just the mandragora kisses. The pulse of the unwarmfire in the grate casting neither shadow nor light, the gems of torches andlamps on the window similarly unconductive. The drowned noise of bells.

Theymight melt into the bed. They might freeze and become a gray statue, foreverkissed together. He did not mind. Then she said, her voice small and thin asher little hands locked on his back: “When Dro comes, we must be strong andfight him. If you promise you’ll help me fight him, I’ll tell you. If you’llhelp me kill him. Will you? For my sister’s sake.”

Itdid not seem a huge thing to kill Parl Dro. It seemed a depressing thing, avile thing, but quite possible.

“If Isay yes, I may not mean it.”

“WhenI—when I... after the stream... you would have killed him then.”

“I wassick.”

“Promise.”

Theywrithed slowly, and he promised her, from some dark dungeon-deep ecstasy, andhe did not mean it. And then she told him, like a trusting child, about theinstrument, puzzling him a great deal, so he questioned her awhile, between thelong rollers of their deadalive and timeless and unimperative love.

Therewere really two very atrocious aspects on which his recognition foundered. Andin the end, when he was convinced, he felt ridiculous. Even as a ghost. Acouple of the idiotic and perverse mainstays of his life were gone. But sincehe was dead, maybe that was only right

Bythen, something peculiar was beginning to happen in the room.

Itoriginated at the window, and was a sort of steady drawing, a bleeding away ofsubstance. Myal became, for the first time since realising his condition,nervous.

“Whatis it?” he demanded. Then he understood without getting an answer from thegirl. They both reacted quite intuitively, falling apart like two tired pagesin a book. And they lay, the lovers, in the tomb of the bed, watching themanifestation of dawn at the window.

Itwas not like any dawn he had witnessed when alive. It had neither colour norlight. It simply sucked the world away, consumed it, in an invisibleconflagration.

“Whathappens,” Myal said eventually, “to us?”

“Whatdo you mean?”

“Inthe daylight”

“Oh,day’s unimportant.”

Hewas frightened, and lay rigid by her listlessness, waiting to loseconsciousness. True, he had heard of ghosts who moved about by day, just as hehad told Parl Dro, but they were rare, perhaps eccentric. Night was the canvasthe deadalive required. Certainly the town of Tulotef required it.

Theroom was like a vague sketch. The bed was a billow of dark mist. And Ciddey—sheturned on her side as if to sleep, and dissolved. And as this happened, for amoment, he thought he saw a fish leap through her hair.

Withhis horror ready, Myal glanced at his own body, and was astonished to find itstill opaque. Surely by now his awareness should be fading out.

Thelast of the room went suddenly, like a swath of smoke blowing off the hill. Heglimpsed the revolting inn sign whirling in the wide air like a cumbersomebird. And then the mattress under him was rock, and the fires of dawn brokethrough abruptly into his sight, blinding him with their mortal violence.

CHAPTERELEVEN

All thecolours in the spectrum raced, like an enraged mob, over the hill, tramplingthrough Myal’s eyes. He felt he could not stand it, after the murks and smouldersand quarter tones of the Ghyste. He also felt a keen insecurity at being leftbehind. The night had pulled out from shore, like a huge boat laden with itspassengers, and somehow he had missed it. Was he then, incredibly, still quick?No. For trying to pick up a pebble on the slope, his perfectly fleshly-lookinghand went through it. And when the sun was higher, he got up, having selected astunted little tree that had apparently been poking through the canopied bedall night, unnoticed, and he walked at it, and, with a desolate wretchedness,right through it.

Witha cry of fear, he stood and listened to his heart pounding where there was noheart to pound. He supposed if he stopped believing in