Needle Rain (11 page)

See
, said that quiet voice.
Listen to that. You’re alive. I’m not cruel and yet I’ve been waiting for this for twenty years. You get so bloody good at waiting when you’re dead.

The breathing paused, as if he now waited for her reply.

Perhaps if she said nothing he would ignore her, forget her presence and she could somehow wrest away control. He. Yes, she was sure it was a ‘he’.

He laughed.
You think I don’t know you’re there? The laughter trailed away. Look, girl, I’ll let you have back more of yourself. Free presents. Don’t fret yourself. I’m not gonna be here forever. Just tonight.

A rush of sensations flooded her consciousness: the wind on her cheeks, the smell of cooking chicken and spices from a pavement restaurant and the acrid scent of smoke, the smooth feel of satin brushing her fingertips.

Here, why are these lot all staring at us? Shiza, what are we dressed in?

She saw herself in a shop window. The pink satin pajamas, bare feet, her brunette hair doing its usual trick, when it hadn’t been brushed, of curling out at odd angles.

Shiza! I’ll get you raped, or worse!
He started to run and she felt the coldness of the stone under her feet. Someone shouted after them but there was no sound of pursuit.

She forgot her decision to stay silent. Worse! What do you call this? This is mind-rape! I want...I want myself back again! Please.

I can’t. I need to do this. Look girl, my name’s Gred Larkin. Twenty years ago someone did me wrong and I aim to make them pay for it. My child’s inheritance went to the wrong person. ‘Sides, I died. I died because of them and Gred, the Gred that I was, he don’t leave things like that be.

So...you’re just taking something back and giving it to your child? A child who’ll be how old?

Not sure. Twenty-five? Maybe.

Well, all right...I can live with that but let me do it. My way. This way is wrong. I’m not some puppet...some trinketton that you can order about or set to a task and then turn off. I’m me. I’m a person!

Silence.

How much of the man was there left? Did he...could he...understand what she felt? Or had the human in him burnt away over the years leaving only a pure core of need?

If she could have sobbed, she would have.

Look. You aren’t getting it, girl –

I’m a woman! Not a girl!

Whatever you say. This is what I have to do. I ain’t got no choice. Live with it. You’ll be rid of me at dawn anyway.

He shut her off. She was again in a world of silence and could only watch. They reached a gated mansion ringed by a high paling fence. At first he seemed unsure how to climb. Then...this time she felt the bizarre disturbing feeling as some part of her was accessed...he went at the fence again, swung over and landed on the other side, as if with the ease of years of practice.

Feeling and sound came back to her.

He paused beneath a large spreading tree. Dead leaves had been raked into piles. A smooth lawn stretched between the shelter of the tree foliage and the house.

Nice to see neat gardeners
.
Happy, girl? Just shut your trap and I’ll let you watch. Three stories, hey? Looks like someone’s done well for themselves.

Only one room on the ground floor was lit up.

We’re still in pajamas, Heloise said.

Ah, that don’t worry me too much, though black would have been better. No guard dogs at least. Ach, what in all hells, is that?

Something walked on eight spindly legs on the lawn. The brass body gleamed as did the red eyes and the black legs, snout, and ears.

What is that?

It’s a trinketton watch-spider, made for someone rich.

Surely? That thing wasn’t about when I was alive. How do I...we get around it?

She resisted. How, she wasn’t sure but it was her mind and be damned if anyone was going to use it without consent. She dredged up memories of the craziest parties, the fight at Drager’s, sparring with Sonja – anything that engaged all her thoughts and emotions. And made them whirl round in her head.

The ghost shrieked.
You can’t stop me! You can’t! You can’t! Stop!
This last vicious word tore through her thoughts like a hurricane. If her mind was a room, she felt herself flattened to the wall, shaking, clinging there, and praying that she was beneath notice.

There
. The whisper of a voice.
Better.
There came the briefest of those ugly touches.
Ah. So the watch-spider’s mostly for show. A rich person’s knick-knack.

She shook herself off. Imagined counting from one to fifty, slowly. Stepped away from that imaginary wall. There had to be a way to regain control, but that had not been it.

Are you going to hurt this person you seek?

The answer was slow in coming.

No. Course not.

How did you tell if a ghost inside your head is lying? Without the telltale signs of the body – the blinks, the angle of the head, the look of the eyes, the mark of sweat on the brow – how could she tell? Yet she tried, and at last, decided he was being truthful.

And after this, you’ll be gone?

Yes.

She could do that. Yes. Hold herself together for a few more minutes or hours then he’d be gone.

And so, at each step of the way, she gifted him with her knowledge. That watch-spiders tended to be slow, though like all trinkettons they were individually made and thus each was unique in some way.

She felt him smile with her face when she said that the glowing red eyes gave away the watch-spider’s positions. Gred made it to the outer wall of the house. The
tick-tack
sound of a watch-spider’s limbs came and went while he hugged the wall
.

If the security is in depth, she told him
,
there’ll be human guards inside as well as someone supervising the watch-spiders. The best way in will be straight up the wall.

All the practice drills with Uncle’s Boys and Girls had never been meant for this. This thought twisted inside her, gnawing its dark message into her head. She ignored it as much as she could. Up the wall he went, reaching for handholds on ledges, guttering, and stone ornaments. Only when he stopped and interrupted the memories of her muscles did he falter.

A window on the second story was open. A basic mistake. Whoever he aimed for, their security was slapdash and not meant to deter a serious intruder. Who could this be – to have committed such awful deeds in the past as to stir a ghost to a twenty-year wrath?

The house may have been in darkness but the green tinge of Gred’s vision returned. The bedroom they entered was empty and so was the hallway outside. Gred sidled from room to room then up the stairs to the third story, taking care to rest his feet on the outer, more stable, edge of each step. Laughter echoed up the stairwell from what must have been a guard room. At the top of the stairs were double timber doors.

Gred eased them open, revealing a vestibule framed by the fronds of ferns. The fronds whispered against Heloise’s satin pajamas as he stepped slowly through the vestibule.

I can feel the dew on them, she marveled. I can smell moisture.

Someone slept on a broad bed in the center of this grandiose room, the sheets rucked down about their waist. The room was warmer than outdoors as if its main purpose was to raise the tropical plants that grew in a multitude of elegant pots. Instead of walls, there were low partitions with tubs of flowering annuals or rows of neatly pruned miniature trees.

The awe that Gred felt filtered through. To remain healthy these plants would require rotation to the outside sun. The staff and labor involved must be enormous.

No wonder there’s lax security, Heloise thought. Who would steal trees?

You’re a fool.
Silently, Gred stepped over to the bed and looked down on a sleeping woman.
Yes, it’s her
.

Wrinkles decorated her plump face and even in sleep she was smiling, as if reinforcing the lines about her mouth. With Gred’s ghostly vision, her short, straight hair was so green that Heloise felt sure it must be pure white in sunlight. Her eyelids flickered in the strange way of those caught deep in their dreams.

“Wake up you old hag,” rasped Gred. Her voice had become that of a man.

“What?” The lady’s eyes snapped open and she sat up, then clambered back against the bed-head, clutching the sheet as high as it would go. She slapped at a switch on her bedside table and a chandelier of trink lamps came on above.

“Is that you...Gred?” She leaned forward, squinting. “It is!
Hmph!
You’ve finally come back, have you?” She slid her legs to the edge of the bed then arranged her white cotton nightdress to cover her knees.

Gred? This woman saw only Gred? Only her though, it seemed, those on the street had seen a woman in pajamas. Something vital linked her to Gred and she saw his face and body, heard his voice.

A slim piece of cool metal slipped into Heloise’s hand. When Gred raised her hand, she saw it was a knife with reflecting silver skeins along its blade. The point was sharp enough to penetrate old skin and flesh. He must have picked it up along the way.

Murder? You promised! Heloise made the words sizzle in her mind. This he would not do.

Be quiet!
“Hello, Anisa. You know why I’ve come.”

She nodded and spoke matter-of-factly, wearily. “To extract a gobbet of flesh from the looks of that. You always did like to overdo things.” She coughed a few times, wiped her eyes, reached to the bedside table, and poured a glass of water. “Excuse me while I wet my throat.”

“Witch!”

“Oh, never that, dear man. A shrewd businesswoman, that I will admit to.”

“You stole from me! My greatest creation!”

“The golden rose? Of course. You held out for too long. Were going to sell it to another. Tut-tut. My only regret is that the foolish man I sent to persuade you was a thug with no sense of when to stop. Maybe he got that from you?” She smiled up at Gred.

“Gah!” The intent, the rage that drove Gred to murder blazed bright, became a crystalline thought. The knife drew back.

No! No! How can I stop this? Heloise scrabbled for a connection to her own muscles – arms, fingers, anywhere – and was left grasping nothing. Gred, she wants this death.

Why? She demanded of him. Do you want to give her what she desires?

The knife darted forward, barely touched Anisa’s neck, then withdrew and stopped, poised to strike again. Anisa gasped. Though she clutched at her neck no blood seemed to flow.

Heloise, caught by relief, allowed another thought to slip loose. But...does she want this? Am I wrong?

Gred ground out a question through clenched teeth. “Tell me, what happened after I died? Now.”

“Or what? You knife me?” She chuckled dryly. “For a moment there, Gred, I saw someone that was not you. A girl?”

I’m a woman, Heloise thought. But...she saw me?

“Ah, Gred, whatever you’ve done to get yourself here, I applaud your tenacity.” She peered into Heloise-Gred’s eyes. “If there’s someone else in there, make sure you leave her as you found her or I’ll come after
you
when I die.” Her smile was mirthless yet full of promise. She plucked at her nightgown for a while before continuing.

“After your death I became a rich woman selling your golden rose...and I became full of regrets. They never left me, not in all these years, and I’m so tired of them. I’m still sorry I was in any way responsible for your death. No matter how much I disliked you.”

The fingers on the knife were white from gripping too tightly.

“You are
sorry
?”

“Yes, I am.” Her eyes were rheumy and tear-wet. “I’d go down on my knees and beg forgiveness but my knees won’t let me. I gave half of all the sales to your son. Don’t know what he’s done with it. He left and went east somewhere, years ago. Since then I’ve given the money to a charitable organization run by a temple.”

“You what?” The hand with the knife shook and Heloise-Gred lowered the knife.

You didn’t know this? Heloise asked him. How could you not know? All this time you’ve been bent on murder and revenge and nothing else. You’ve held yourself to this course purely because of an accidental death? This woman is not that bad a person. Spare her, please. Gred?

“I was wrong.” His voice was soft, his words as distant as a breeze sifting through the leaves of a forest, as sorrowful as that of a man deserted by his nature, his gods, his sanity.

She felt his soul slip away. She was not sorry that she was finally free yet tears blurred her eyes. When her nose began to run and she sniffed the tears back, she awoke to her own body.

“I’m me again!” She stared at her fingers and felt her face then said in awe, “I’m back! I’m back!”

When she quieted, she found the woman, Anisa, still sitting on the bed, watching her antics with a queer look transfixing her – part fear, part relief, and part puzzlement.