Ghosts and Other Lovers (6 page)

Composing the letter was difficult. When put into words, what had happened to her sounded horrible, and Eustacia didn't want Lydia thinking that. She didn't want her favorite sister horrified or revulsed, as Mildred was. She had to choose her words carefully. She couldn't say too much. She was mysterious. She evoked the spirit of the séance. Lydia must come and see for herself. When she was here, Eustacia would be able to make her understand.

 

 

Until the doctor arrived, Eustacia was made to keep to her room as if she were contagious. She usually never minded solitude, and was grateful for any excuse to avoid work, but what once would have felt like freedom was now an imposition. She was being punished for something which was not her fault.

 

Alone in her room, cut off from her family, she concentrated on extruding ectoplasm and forming it into shapes. She created shaky likenesses of Mildred and Lydia. She worked herself to exhaustion and beyond, determined to clear her system of the ghost-matter, to give the doctor, when he came, nothing to find. Let him think he had been called all the way out here for some fantasy of Mildred's.

But it was no use. Perhaps she had been over-confident about the laws of cause and effect and in believing she had some control over what her body produced and when, for despite her labors, she woke the next morning lying in a puddle of something half liquid, half matter. And when Dr. Purves arrived in the afternoon, mucus dripped from her fingertips, her clothes clung stickily to damp flesh, and she felt trails of drool beside her mouth, on her brow, and beneath her ears.

"Hmmm!" said Dr. Purves, and, "Well, well!" and, "What's this?" He didn't look revolted, horrified, or even astonished. There was, on his face, a carefully schooled, non-judgmental look of mild interest. "Feeling a bit hot, are we?"

He thought it was perspiration. "No," said Eustacia hopelessly.

"Ah, do you mind if I . . . ?"

She gave him her hand, and felt the surprise he did not allow to register on his face. He looked at her hand, touched the stuff, waited, watching it well up again. "Hmmm. And how long has this been going on?"

She told him. He asked questions and she answered them truthfully. He did not ask her what she thought was happening to her or why, so she did not tell him about Mr. Elphinstone or the matter produced by the bodies of mediums for the use of those who had passed over. She didn't tell him that she could, with her thoughts, increase the flow and cause it to shape itself into images. Dr. Purves was a man of science; she knew he would not believe her, and she didn't believe he could help her. Undoubtedly, Mildred hoped the doctor would be able to give a name to Eustacia's disease and also provide the cure, but she knew otherwise. She knew, now, watching him watch her, that he had never seen the like of this before, and that he didn't like it.

He asked her to undress. He examined her. He told her he was taking a sample for testing. She watched him scoop a tendril of ectoplasm from her armpit into a small glass bottle and cap it firmly. The piece he had captured was the size of a garden snail without the shell. She watched him put the bottle safely away in his bag. By the time he got home, perhaps even by the time he left this house, that bottle would be empty. Would he come back for more, or would he decide it had never existed, preferring not to know anything that might contradict his rational view of the universe?

While she was dressing, he washed his hands very thoroughly. She wondered if soap and water were a protection, or if she had now infected him. But perhaps the doctor, skeptical of spiritualism, would be protected by science and his own unbelief. She wondered how he would explain it, and what he would do, if his body began leaking ectoplasm.

"Now, you're not to worry," he said. "Rest, don't exert yourself. Keep yourself warm. And clean. Wash and, er, change your sheets as often as you feel the need."

"What's wrong with me?"

"There's nothing wrong. You mustn't think that. Didn't I say you weren't to worry? Just keep warm and rest and you'll soon be as right as rain. I'll have a word with your sister before I go, about your diet. I'll tell her everything she needs to know." He made his escape before she could ask again.

She slumped back in her bed with a grim smile. She hadn't expected an intelligent reply. She knew he didn't know what was wrong with her, and no amount of thinking, no amount of study, no amount of second opinions from his learned colleagues, would change that. Even if he locked her up in a hospital somewhere and watched her day and night, he'd be none the wiser, because what had happened to her belonged to another realm, not of scientific medicine, but of mysticism.

She could suddenly see herself in a hospital somewhere, locked in an underfurnished room in a building where lunatics screamed and raged, watched by men in white coats through a hole in the door, and she went cold with dread. She burrowed under the sheets and pulled the blankets up to her nose with hands that were cold but, for once, miraculously dry. That must not happen -- surely Mildred wouldn't let that happen to her? But of course Mildred didn't understand, and she might well trust a doctor who promised a cure. She wished the doctor had never come. She knew he would never cure her, no matter what he tried, and she did not want to be studied by him. If he decided she was an interesting case . . . Eustacia clenched her teeth to stop them chattering. She wouldn't let it happen. Mildred wouldn't let it happen. Lydia wouldn't let it happen. Lydia was coming soon. Lydia would understand; Lydia would save her.

 

 

Lydia arrived four days later. Sitting in her chair by the window, well wrapped in shawls and blankets, with nothing to do but watch and wait, Eustacia thought she'd never been so glad to see another person. It was life Lydia brought into her room -- the sickroom, her prison -- life and a taste of the world she had grown hungry for.

 

"Whatever is the matter with Mildred?" Lydia asked as she swept in. "A face as long as a wet Sunday when she said you were poorly but -- oh!" The cheerful prattle ended, the exclamation shocked out of her, when, as she bent to kiss her sister, her lips encountered not the familiar warm, soft texture of her check, but flesh slippery with a chill and slimy coating.

"I'm not ill," Eustacia said looking urgently into her sister's eyes. To her relief, she saw neither horror nor disgust reflected there, only a puzzled concern. "No matter what Mildred thinks, or the doctor. It is odd, though . . . hard to understand . . . hard to write about in a letter. That's why I wanted to see you. I wanted you to see me. Because I am all right . . . I am still
me
.

"Of course you are! Still my own dear sister. Is this some new ploy to escape doing chores? Or is that what Mildred thinks? I had thought, from the way she spoke, that it was your time."

She shook her head. "Do sit down, Lydia. I'll have to show you." She was excited and scared. There was a tingling inside, a nervous reaction to match the purely physical, localized tingle in her hands. The feeling of something that had to come out. And, now, a new excitement because there was meaning and new purpose to what she was about to do. For the first time she had an audience. Was she good enough for her audience? Lydia's response was all-important.

"You remember . . . Mr. Elphinstone?"

"Yes, of course."

"And what he did that evening, and what he showed us? The ectoplasm? He did something else that same evening, to me. When he touched me. I don't understand how or why, but he gave it to me somehow." She paused, aware of gathering her power, of concentrating it all in her hands, which she held now before her, just above her lap. Lydia said nothing, and there was nothing in her look but waiting and wonder.

"Watch," said Eustacia, and stared at her own hands as the thick, wavering white steam poured out of them, her fingers become fountains. Ten separate streams merged and grew into one almost-solid form: head, neck, shoulders, chest . . . until it was a baby floating there, its features somewhat vague and undefined but still and undeniably a baby.
There.

Eustacia felt a little dizzy, and had the familiar sensation of having been drained. But she also felt triumphant, and as she looked up from her creation she was smiling happily. "There -- see? It's your baby."

Lydia's face had gone an unhealthy yellowish color. She shook her head slowly. "No," she said, sounding tortured. "That's not my baby -- it's not!" She clapped her hands to her mouth, retching, and staggered to her feet, knocking the chair over with the heavy sideways sweep of her skirts. She managed to get to the basin before she threw up.

Eustacia closed her eyes, but the noise and smell made her stomach churn in terrible sympathy. She kept her gorge down with great effort. "I'm sorry," she said, when Lydia's crisis seemed to have passed. "I know it must be a shock to see your baby--"

"No! That's not my baby! How can you?"

Eustacia struggled to rise, reaching for her sister.

Lydia shrieked. "Don't touch me! You monster!"

"But -- but you were so happy when Mr. Elphinstone did it -- this is the same -- don't you see? I can do the same thing--"

"It's not the same! It's not the same!" Lydia glared at her, and this look was much worse than the look Mildred had given her, for there was not merely horror in it, but hate. "How could you . . . what are you trying to do, make me miscarry?"

Eustacia's mouth hung open. "I didn't know. . . ."

"Monster! Monster!"

The door opened then -- Mildred, attracted by the noise. Weeping, Lydia rushed to the safety of her older sister's embrace. They went out of the room together and the door closed, shutting Eustacia in alone with the thing she had made.

She looked at her creation, the baby bobbing and floating in the air like something unborn. Like something dead. But it had never been alive. It wasn't real, not a real baby. But neither was the thing Mr. Elphinstone had made, although, in the dim and flickering firelight, it had seemed real enough to eyes that wanted it to be. She understood that the situation was different here and now. But she hadn't meant any harm. She thought of getting up and going downstairs, going after Lydia and explaining, making her understand. But she had not the energy for it. It was impossible. She could scarcely even think. All she could do was fall back in her chair and fall asleep.

When she woke, with a throbbing head competing for attention against a painfully empty stomach, it was much later in the day and the room was thick with shadows. The baby had vanished back into the nothing from which it had been conjured. She rose from her chair and stretched aching muscles, feeling as if she had become an old woman while she slept. Certainly she felt like a different person from the hopeful girl who had waited impatiently for her sister that morning. She hoped that the passing of the hours had calmed Lydia. Maybe she would be ready to listen now, and surely if she listened she would understand. She still felt Lydia was the one person in the world who
could
understand.

But when she reached the door she could not open it. She thought at first it was her own weakness, and continued twisting the handle to no avail. Her wits were still so slow after her sleep that it took her some time to realize that the door to her room had been locked from the outside.

They had locked her in.

It had to be a mistake. She went back to her chair, turned it so she could look out the window, and sat down. She did not want to find out that it had not been a mistake, so she would not pound on the door and make demands that could be refused. Mildred would come up and unlock it later. It must have been locked on account of Lydia's fright. Once she was allowed to explain there would be no more need for locked doors.

By the time Mildred came up with her dinner on a tray Eustacia was almost ready to weep with hunger and worry.

"Mildred, I have to see Lydia, I have to explain--"

"She's gone home."

"I didn't mean to upset her; I have to tell her--"

"Oh, I know. It's not your fault." A sneer was not Mildred's usual expression. She would not meet her sister's eye as she spoke.

"It's
not
my fault -- I can't help it -- I didn't mean it -- oh, please--"

"
I
know. You're ill." She snorted. "I saw the doctor. I rode with Lydia into town, and I had a consultation with him. Do you know what he said? There's nothing wrong with you at all. Not physically. He says it's all in your head. You know what I say? I say it's evil. Not sickness -- evil. Not in your head, but your heart. Evil in your heart. And that
is
your fault. You'd better admit it, missy. And pray to God to take it away. There's your dinner."

"Please!"

But Mildred was already out of the room without a backward look. And then came the sound of the key turning in the lock.

Eustacia ate her dinner. What else was there to do? After she had eaten she could think more clearly, but the thoughts were not pleasant ones. It was obvious Lydia would be of no help; she had been too badly frightened. If only she had been more cautious . . . if only she had led Lydia on a bit more carefully. . . . She thought of Mr. Elphinstone's pompous speech; the way he had elicited responses from his audience; the extinguishing of the lamps. By firelight, my baby would have looked more real, she thought. But it was too late to think of that now. Lydia would not help her. The doctor had, literally, washed his hands of her, declaring her either a fake or mad. And Mildred was of no use, either, having decided she was bad. Worse than that, Mildred was her jailor, and represented her whole family.

Who was there who could help her?

She remembered the cold, damp touch of Mr. Elphinstone's hands, and the way his eyes had pierced into hers. He had marked her then, that evening; he had made her his, although she had tried to deny it. To give in now, to go to him despite her revulsion . . . she would be trading one sort of imprisonment for another. But at least it would be different. Not the life she would have chosen freely, but still a life. And she would learn to use her talent: it would
be
a talent then, and not a loathsome illness.