[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.She had to admit to herself, now, that she had only focused so intently on the music because she was reluctant to face up to the true suggestiveness of her hallucinations.The touch, she had previously felt sure, was ninety-per-cent imagination—but so was masturbation, if it actually got her to where she was going.Thus far, the ghost never had—but Kit now had no idea at all whether that was due to the phantom’s impotence or her own refusal to become fully aroused.Now, in the aftermath of the boy’s not-entirely-inexpert attentions, she was closer than she’d been for quite some time, and she didn’t know whether to be heartened or sickened by the thought that if she only put her mind to it a little, she might actually be able to get something out of the ghost’s teasing attentions.What difference did it make, Kit wondered, that the ghost was, or had been, a whore? She had never been under the impression, even for an instant, that the ghost might be a man, so she had always thought of the touch as something more or less than natural in more ways than one.Anyway, it wasn’t as if she were being asked to pay?Or was she?That, she realized, was the most uncomfortable thought of all.A ghostly seducer was one thing, even if the seduction in question was lesbian in kind, but a ghost that might expect a price to be paid for the rewards of seduction was something else.Kit remembered what she had said to Stephen in the pub, as sarcastically as she could: Given that she seems to have been a devil-worshipping whore, I suppose, one way or another, she must want my body.That was as close as she had come to telling him about the touch, or at least about the nature of the most insistent aspect of the touch.He hadn’t taken it seriously, and she didn’t want to take it seriously either, but the question still needed to be asked and answered.Why was the ghost touching her up? What did it hope to achieve—and if the immediate answer to that was obvious, what was the ghostly whore expecting in return for favors granted? Was it mere coincidence that “wanting her body” might have a literal as well as a metaphorical meaning for a ghostly succubus?Kit had told the truth when she had informed smug Stephen, sharply, that although she was a bus driver by vocation she wasn’t stupid.She knew what the word succubus meant.She knew, too, that in theory, succubi were supposed to visit male dreamers, leaving female ones to incubi—but the theory in question had been drawn up by monks in the Middle Ages.In the twenty-first century, a certain additional versatility could easily be conceded to personifications of lewdness.Kit had always thought of herself as dead straight, but if she really were dealing with the dead, straightness was probably not even an issue.Given the inherent perversity of attempted intercourse between the living and the dead, gender issues could safely be deemed a minor matter.except that all that was just intellectualizing bullshit, by which means she was trying yet again to distract herself from the insidious horror of her situation.Why me? she wondered, for what must now be the fiftieth or sixtieth.Why, of all people, me?Reflexively, she put the imaginary reply into Even Stephen’s voice.Why anybody?Even so, tonight—for the first time in a week—the touch did not come.The fact that Stephen had got into the breach first, with no less success than the ghost had so far contrived, seemed to have interrupted the process of spectral seduction.Or maybe Rose Selavy was just biding her time, challenging Kit to make the next move, with or without Stephen to lend a little bit more than a hand.Kit could think of worse reasons for starting a relationship—but she could think of better ones too.She shook Stephen awake.“This place isn’t big enough for the both of us,” she said, meaning the single bed.“Not for sleeping comfortably, at any rate.If you want to stay all night, one of us had better use the settee—and it’s not going to be me, ducks.”She gave him the choice of staying on the settee because she knew that he’d missed the last bus, but she didn’t expect him to take it.He was bright enough, or sensitive enough, to realize that, so he pulled his clothes on.By the time he was dressed he was wide enough awake to say: “Can I see you again?”“Sure,” she said.“There’s a payphone on the next landing down—the number’s next to the earpiece.You’ll probably get Liz or May, but don’t worry about it.Just ask for Kit.Don’t leave it too long, though.I might be on late shift next week.”He didn’t have to ask her for a pencil.He was a student, after all.He had a pen in his pocket, and a diary too.He tore an unused page out of January and scribbled down a number.“My mobile,” he said.“If it’s switched off, leave a message on my voicemail.Or you can text me, if you’ve got a mobile yourself.”“Thanks,” she said.“I haven’t.” Kit stuck the piece of paper under her pillow because she didn’t want to get out of bed to put it on the table or the trunk.She was half-afraid that once he’d gone she’d have to repeat the whole charade of waiting and thinking, but whatever else he’d failed to achieve he’d managed to tire her out.Once she had the bed to herself again, and was securely ensconced in the middle, she drifted off without further disturbance—and so far as she could remember when she awoke the next morning, her sleep was dreamless.CHAPTER FIVEOn the following evening, as Kit sprawled fully-dressed on the bed, watching the Channel 5 movie—which had obviously been made as a pilot for an aborted TV series—the pattern reasserted itself in no uncertain terms.As soon as the slowly-accumulating darkness within the room was suddenly split as the street-light outside the window came to life the expanse of wall beside the bed underwent a subtle sea-change.The shadowy blotches marring the paint-job took on a sinister aspect, for no good reason that Kit could grasp.They didn’t become any more distinct, and they didn’t move, but it seemed that they acquired an ominous significance that they hadn’t had before [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]