I?”
“. . . maybe a little.”
“Okay, well. Let’s move things on a bit.”
She stepped forward, past him, and snapped the cabinet open.
Inside, as out, Kate-Mary des Esseintes’ Thanatoscopeon was dark indeed; darker by far than the single light-source merited, a concentrated snarl of nothing much cooked to sludge from years on years of waiting, followed by the briefest possible burst of hunger slaked, loneliness assuaged. Devize—Carra—thrust both hands inside, up to the bandaged wrists, and didn’t even flinch as words the colour of haematomas came crawling up her arms, her cleavage and neck, to bruise her very face like slaps: NO, NOT THIS NOT FOR YOU, NEVER
YOU
, KEEP OUT KEEP OUT
KEEP OUT
.
“Poor Lo Lardner,” she said, ignoring the unseen hecklers doodling on her flesh, each scratch a rotten fruit chucked straight from the choir invisible’s peanut gallery. “Melinda’d been down the anorexia path herself, so she thought she knew what was best; Guy went along to get along. Why not? Didn’t cost him anything but money. And the Clinic, they were all good people, but—how could they possibly know the truth? That half her body-weight,
more
than half, kept being sucked out every night, siphoned off to make fake flesh for something she didn’t know enough to say ‘no’ to?”
A full red hand-print, palm plus five fingers, rocked her jaw to the left, then the right. But Carra kept on talking.
“Oh, it told her it loved her, and she liked
that
, because nobody else did it much, anymore . . . told her it would punish her parents for their neglect, that all she had to do was break out and run home, and they’d always be together. And hell, maybe it wasn’t even a lie, because that’s where the cops found her, sure enough: inside this thing, all curled up with her arms ’round herself like she was giving herself a hug, shrunk down to the size of an Inca mummy. All
desiccated
.”
The slaps looked more like punches now, and Sy felt himself jolt with each impact, braced to—what? Jump to her aid, throw a few jabs himself? Like he’d really be able to
do
anything to—whatever-it-was—
(
You could
try
, goddamnit, considering. At the very
least
.
)
But in the same instant the thought formed, Carra was already glancing back, one blackening eye crinkled, odd half-smile a genuine grin. “Oh, Sy,” she said, her tinny headcold voice gone suddenly lush with deep, true warmth. “That’s really nice.”
Not necessary, though.
“And yes, I
am
happy, for once. Because usually I can’t do a damn thing but say ‘yup, haunted!’ no matter
how
much power I supposedly have—how high I measure on Abbott’s stupid scales. But this . . . I
can
do something about this.
This
, I can handle.”
(
That’s why it’s afraid of me.
)
The box was vibrating now, base thrumming on the locker’s concrete floor, kicking spume. Its scrim ruffled back and forth like a rattler’s tail, doors straining to slam, an eight-foot, velvet-lined mahogany pitcher plant. Yet—
“No,” she told it, “of course you don’t want someone like
me
, somebody who actually knows what they’re doing. But that’s okay.” Voice dropping further, breathy-rough, almost verging into a growl, to add: “I don’t much want
you
, either.”
Later, examining her dropped fan of Polaroids—slick and stinking, their negative-on-positive images degrading even as he watched, cured in a strange mixture of developing agent and ectoplasm—Sy would finally see what she probably saw, at that moment: what she’d been looking at all along, with it very much looking back. A face like a mask, whose underside could be glimpsed through the empty sockets of its eyes, peering from beneath the cabinet’s glossy skin like some albino goldfish studying passersby through its aquarium walls. In the final one, taken from a particularly vertiginous angle, Carra had managed to catch her own reflection—the thing, spore or seed of
“. . . maybe a little.”
“Okay, well. Let’s move things on a bit.”
She stepped forward, past him, and snapped the cabinet open.
Inside, as out, Kate-Mary des Esseintes’ Thanatoscopeon was dark indeed; darker by far than the single light-source merited, a concentrated snarl of nothing much cooked to sludge from years on years of waiting, followed by the briefest possible burst of hunger slaked, loneliness assuaged. Devize—Carra—thrust both hands inside, up to the bandaged wrists, and didn’t even flinch as words the colour of haematomas came crawling up her arms, her cleavage and neck, to bruise her very face like slaps: NO, NOT THIS NOT FOR YOU, NEVER
YOU
, KEEP OUT KEEP OUT
KEEP OUT
.
“Poor Lo Lardner,” she said, ignoring the unseen hecklers doodling on her flesh, each scratch a rotten fruit chucked straight from the choir invisible’s peanut gallery. “Melinda’d been down the anorexia path herself, so she thought she knew what was best; Guy went along to get along. Why not? Didn’t cost him anything but money. And the Clinic, they were all good people, but—how could they possibly know the truth? That half her body-weight,
more
than half, kept being sucked out every night, siphoned off to make fake flesh for something she didn’t know enough to say ‘no’ to?”
A full red hand-print, palm plus five fingers, rocked her jaw to the left, then the right. But Carra kept on talking.
“Oh, it told her it loved her, and she liked
that
, because nobody else did it much, anymore . . . told her it would punish her parents for their neglect, that all she had to do was break out and run home, and they’d always be together. And hell, maybe it wasn’t even a lie, because that’s where the cops found her, sure enough: inside this thing, all curled up with her arms ’round herself like she was giving herself a hug, shrunk down to the size of an Inca mummy. All
desiccated
.”
The slaps looked more like punches now, and Sy felt himself jolt with each impact, braced to—what? Jump to her aid, throw a few jabs himself? Like he’d really be able to
do
anything to—whatever-it-was—
(
You could
try
, goddamnit, considering. At the very
least
.
)
But in the same instant the thought formed, Carra was already glancing back, one blackening eye crinkled, odd half-smile a genuine grin. “Oh, Sy,” she said, her tinny headcold voice gone suddenly lush with deep, true warmth. “That’s really nice.”
Not necessary, though.
“And yes, I
am
happy, for once. Because usually I can’t do a damn thing but say ‘yup, haunted!’ no matter
how
much power I supposedly have—how high I measure on Abbott’s stupid scales. But this . . . I
can
do something about this.
This
, I can handle.”
(
That’s why it’s afraid of me.
)
The box was vibrating now, base thrumming on the locker’s concrete floor, kicking spume. Its scrim ruffled back and forth like a rattler’s tail, doors straining to slam, an eight-foot, velvet-lined mahogany pitcher plant. Yet—
“No,” she told it, “of course you don’t want someone like
me
, somebody who actually knows what they’re doing. But that’s okay.” Voice dropping further, breathy-rough, almost verging into a growl, to add: “I don’t much want
you
, either.”
Later, examining her dropped fan of Polaroids—slick and stinking, their negative-on-positive images degrading even as he watched, cured in a strange mixture of developing agent and ectoplasm—Sy would finally see what she probably saw, at that moment: what she’d been looking at all along, with it very much looking back. A face like a mask, whose underside could be glimpsed through the empty sockets of its eyes, peering from beneath the cabinet’s glossy skin like some albino goldfish studying passersby through its aquarium walls. In the final one, taken from a particularly vertiginous angle, Carra had managed to catch her own reflection—the thing, spore or seed of
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