Writer's Life (9 page)

"You wanted to take him over!" the rational side of my mind protested.

"I would grant him powers of which he had never dreamed," the girl continued. "I would bestow upon him increased longevity, allow him to live beyond the paltry duration you poor beings are allotted. I would give him perfect health, and new abilities. He would have intuition as none of you might know, and foresight, and the ability to shape circumstances to his will..."

A sudden, dreadful realisation came to me. "The books," I began. "He knew I was coming!"

She smiled, and the quick knowing look that crossed her face filled me with sudden panic. "All along..." I cried. "If he could shape circumstances..." My mind reeled, and I felt utterly powerless before this lambent being.

"Why?" I managed. "What do you want?"

"Cunningham-Price is old," she said. "There is only so much that even I might do to sustain and prolong the life of the flesh. He is unable to host me any longer. I require someone with his sensibilities, with his innate understanding of what it is to be human, someone in contact with their emotions. We read your books, Daniel. We knew you were the one."

She stepped forward. Behind her, Cunningham-Price fell to the floor like a dead weight.

I cried out in an anguish of dilemma. I was overcome with a tidal wave of desire, the need to lavish upon this creature all the love I had within me, even though I knew that she was manipulating this desire. I wanted to love the girl as I loved Mina—but, even as I realised this, I knew too that the girl would be unable to reciprocate: what did this creature of energy know of the very attribute unique to the human race? She would inhabit me and use me, and I would live an extended life in thrall to this supernal creature, forever in love, while she would study me like some laboratory specimen, without the need or desire to love me in return.

I cried out. I wanted to take the easy option and step towards her, allow her to inhabit my being. I would be free then of the tangled web of emotions that make human relationships so terribly difficult. I would be her slave, and a part of me desired the ease of worshipping at the altar of her beauty.

And yet... and yet, what made human relations so joyous, so fulfilling, was that the effort of loving was often rewarded, that effort expelled was sometimes repaid, or at least we live in hope that our need to be needed might find in someone, somewhere, a like need...

I dived away from her outstretched hands. I fell to the floor and scrambled in the direction of the door. I heard her coaxing, mocking laughter trilling behind me, but I dared not bring myself to look back in case I weakened and allowed her entry.

On all fours I lunged at the door, hauling myself upright, flinging it open and running. I stumbled again and again, crying out as I imagined, at any second, to feel the warmth of her energy flow into me. Again and again I picked myself up, flung myself up the flight of stairs, my arms and legs bruised and painful, my heart labouring fit to burst. I came to the conservatory, and only when I saw the full moon silvering the panes of glass did I wonder how long I had been in the cellar. It had seemed like minutes, but evidently hours had elapsed. Without a backward glance ran through the darkened Hall in the
direction of the entrance.

I hauled open the front door and bolted into the night. My car, a welcome symbol of banal modernity, stood where I had left it before the house. I dived into the driver's seat and started the engine—miraculously it fired first time—then steered in a crazy, careering u-turn and accelerated away from the Hall.

I did not look back—a fear like I had never known before would not allow me to turn my head to check if I was being pursued, even though every fibre of my being wanted to do so.

I sped from the Hall, down the hill away from the woodland. I wondered at the creature's range, its ability to chase me until I was caught. I told myself that, the greater distance I was able to put between myself and Edgecoombe Hall, the safer I would be. It had not, after all, possessed me when it had had the chance back in the cavern. Perhaps my headlong flight had saved my soul...

Still I accelerated, taking corners at breakneck sped, with no care at all for my safety, pursued as I imagined myself to be by a far, far greater danger.

I failed to see the oncoming vehicle until it was too late. Its glaring headlights appeared around the corner as if from nowhere, and instinctively I hauled on the wheel. My car careered from the road, bucked over a banking and rolled down what seemed like a never-ending incline. By the time it reached the bottom and halted, on its side, broken glass tinkling around me in a strangely beautiful glissando, my consciousness was rapidly ebbing away.

Seconds later I passed into oblivion.

~

There are times when I give thanks for what has happened to me, knowing that I am unique among all men; there are other times, however, when I feel the curse of this possession. To give love that cannot be returned, and to be denied the opportunity to exhibit love for any other...

From the personal journals of Vaughan Edwards.

~

I came awake to find myself slung on my side, cradled by the seat-belt. My body was frozen, and an intense pain gripped my head and legs. I waited, trapped, for the girl to find me, to take me over. I cried aloud in anguish at my inability to flee. I thought of Mina, and wanted nothing more than to apologise.

I passed out.

And awoke... to find myself in bed, and warm, the pain no more than a distant memory. I recall crying out in fear, and a soothing hand upon my forehead, before falling unconscious yet again.

The next time I came awake, I had a raging thirst. I tried to find the words to communicate my desire for water, but the effort was beyond me. I tried again, what seemed like hours later, and was rewarded. A disembodied hand—I could not move my head to see who it belonged to—lifted a beaker of water to my lips, and I drank.

Between moments of fleeting consciousness, I dreamed. I was in the cellar, and the girl-creature was reaching out, and I felt again the desire to give this being all the love that I possessed, and then it came to me with even more intense terror that that love could never be returned.

I awoke once in darkness, the hospital quiet around me, and the more I thought about the events at the Hall, the more I came to doubt the truth of what had happened.

Then I recalled, crying quietly to myself, what Mina had told me the last time I had seen her: that she would not be there for me when I returned from Edgecoombe Hall.

When I awoke again, it was morning. Intense sunlight cascaded through a window. A vase of brilliant daffodils seemed the most miraculous sight I had ever witnessed.

I felt a hand take mine, and squeeze.

With incredible effort, I moved my head, and the reward was worth the pain.

Mina sat beside the bed, smiling at me through her tears.

"You fractured your skull," she reported in a small voice, "broke both your legs. You were in a coma for a week. They thought-" she stopped herself, dried her eyes with a Kleenex. "They thought you might not survive."

I gripped her fingers. "I'm sorry," I said.

"Daniel," she whispered, after a long silence, "what happened?"

I shook my head. "I don't know," I said. "I really don't know..."

A nightmare, I thought...

She smiled at me, and I slipped into unconsciousness.

She was by my side when I awoke again, maybe hours later. She was staring at a newspaper, her expression shocked.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Daniel, look..."
She held up the Yorkshire Post. The front-page headline declared: MISSING NOVELIST DISCOVERED DEAD.

"Vaughan Edwards," she reported. "He was found yesterday in the cellar of the Hall. He'd died of a heart attack. They give his age here as seventy-two." She lowered the paper and smiled at me, shaking her head. "All those crazy ideas of yours..."

I smiled at her. "I was a fool," I said.

I watched her, and wondered what had really happened at the Hall; had it all, actually, been nothing more than a figment of my over-wrought desperation—a cathartic episode created by my desire to find love in this loveless world?

Quite suddenly, as I stared at Mina, an idea occurred to me. I smiled at the thought.

She looked up. "What is it?"

I said, "I want to write a new novel, Mina."

Her face clouded. "About what happened?"

I stared at her beautiful left hand, resting upon her knee. "No," I said. "It will be about you... If you'll let me, that is."

She had always been reluctant to have me write about her, as if by doing so I might claim possession of the part of her that she had been so careful to withhold.

Now she smiled. "I think perhaps I might," she said.

~

This novel is dedicated with love to Mina, for showing me that the true measure of love is one's actions, not words.

Dedication in Daniel Ellis's novel
A Woman of Quality
.