The Second Wish and Other Exhalations Read online

  “What’s your name?” he asked, not finding it remarkable that he did not already know. Only the sound of the question seemed strange to him, as if a stranger had spoken the words.

  “Cassilda,” she replied.

  “A nice name,” he told her awkwardly. “Unusual.”

  “I was named after a distant … relative.”

  After a pause he asked: “Where are we going, Cassilda?”

  “Is it important?”

  “I’m afraid we can’t go to Szolyhaza—” he began to explain.

  She shrugged, “My … home, then.”

  “Is it far?”

  “Not far, but—”

  “But?”

  She slowed the car, brought it to a halt. She was a shadowy silhouette beside him, her perfume washing him in warm waves. “On second thoughts, perhaps I had better take you straight back to your hotel — and leave you there.”

  “No, I wouldn’t hear of it,” he spoke quickly, seeing his hopes for the night crumbling about him, sobered by the thought that she could so very easily slip out of his life. The early hours of the morning would be time enough for slipping away — and he would be doing it, not the girl. “You’d have to walk home, for one thing, for I’m afraid I couldn’t let you take the car …” To himself he added: And I know that taxis aren’t to be found locally.

  “Listen,” he continued when she made no reply, “you just drive yourself home. I’ll take the car from there back to my hotel.”

  “But you do not seem steady enough to drive.”

  “Then perhaps you’ll make me a cup of coffee?” It was a terribly juvenile gambit, but he was gratified to see her smiling behind her mask.

  Then, just as quickly as the smile had come, it fell away to be replaced by a frown he could sense rather than detect in the dim glow of the dashboard lights. “But you must not see where I live.”

  “Why on earth not.”

  “It is not … a rich dwelling.”

  “I don’t care much for palaces.”

  “I don’t want you to be able to find your way back to me afterward. This can be for one night only …”

  Now this, Harry thought to himself, is more like it! He felt his throat going dry again. “Cassilda, it can’t possibly be for more than one night,” he gruffly answered. “To­morrow I leave for Budapest.”

  “Then surely it is better that—”

  “Blindfold me!”

  “What?”

  “Then I won’t be able to see where you live. If you blindfold me I’ll see nothing except … your room.” He reached across and slipped his hand inside her silk blouse, caressing a breast.

  She reached over and stroked his neck, then pulled gently away. She nodded knowingly in the darkness: “Yes, perhaps we had better blindfold you, if you insist upon handling everything that takes your fancy!”

  She tucked a black silk handkerchief gently down be­hind his mask, enveloping him in darkness. Exposed and compromised as she did this, she made no immediate effort to extricate herself as he fondled her breasts through the silk of her blouse. Finally, breathing the words into his face, she asked:

  “Can you not wait?”

  “It’s not easy.”

  “Then I shall make it easier.” She took his hands away from her body, sat back in her seat, slipped the car into gear and pulled away. Harry sat in total darkness, hot and flushed and full of lust.

  “We are there,” she announced, rousing him from some peculiar torpor. He was aware only of silence and darkness. He felt just a trifle queasy and told himself that it must be the effect of being driven blindfolded over poor roads. Had he been asleep? What a fool he was making of himself!

  “No,” she said as he groped for the door handle. “Let’s just sit here for a moment or two. Open a bottle, I’m thirsty.”

  “Bottle? Oh, yes!” Harry suddenly remembered the two bottles of wine they had brought with them from the Schützenfest. He reached into the back seat and found one of them. “But we have no glasses. And why should we drink here when it would be so much more comfortable inside?”

  She laughed briefly. “Harry, I’m a little nervous …”

  Of course! French courage! — or was it Dutch? What odds? If a sip or two would help her get into the right frame of mind, why not? Silently he blessed the manufacturers of screw-top bottles and twisted the cap free. She took the wine from him, and he heard the swishing of liquid. Her perfume seemed so much stronger, heady as the scent of poppies. And yet beneath it he sensed … something tainted?

  She returned the bottle to him and he lifted it to parched lips, taking a long deep draft. His head immediately swam, and he felt a joyous urge to break into wild laughter. Instead, discovering himself the victim of so strange a compulsion, he gave a little grunt of surprise.

  When he passed the bottle back to her, he let his hand fall to her breast once more — and gasped at the touch of naked flesh, round and swelling! She had opened her blouse to him — or she had removed it altogether! With trembling fingers he reached for his mask and the handker­chief tucked behind it.

  “No!” she said, and he heard the slither of silk. “There, I’m covered again. Here, finish the bottle and then get out of the car. I’ll lead you …”

  “Cassilda,” he slurred her name. “Let’s stop this little game now and—”

  “You may not take off the blindfold until we are in my room, when we both stand naked.” He was startled by the sudden coarseness of her voice — the lust he could now plainly detect — and he was also fired by it. He jerked violently when she took hold of him with a slender hand, working her fingers expertly, briefly, causing him to gabble some inarticulate inanity.

  Momentarily paralysed with nerve-tingling pleasure and shock, when finally he thought to reach for her she was gone. He heard the whisper of her dress and the click of the car door as she closed it behind her.

  Opening his own door he almost fell out, but her hand on his shoulder steadied him. “The other bottle,” she reminded him.

  Clumsily he found the wine, then stumbled as he turned from the car. She took his free hand, whispering: “Ssh! Quiet!” and gave a low guttural giggle.

  Blind, he stumbled after her across a hard, faintly familiar surface. Something brushed against his leg, cold, furry and damp. The fronds of a bushy plant, he suspected.

  “Lower your head,” she commanded. “Carefully down the steps. This way. Almost there.

  “Cassilda,” he said, holding tightly to her hand. “I’m dizzy.”

  “The wine!” she laughed.

  “Wait, wait!” he cried, dragging her to a halt. “My head’s swimming.” He put out the hand that held the bottle, found a solid surface, pressed his knuckles against it and steadied himself. He leaned against a wall of sorts, dry and flaky to his touch, and gradually the dizziness passed.

  This is no good, he told himself: I’ll be of no damn use to her unless I can control myself! To her he said, “Potent stuff, your local wine.”

  “Only a few more steps,” she whispered.

  She moved closer and again there came the sound of sliding silk, of garments falling. He put his arm around her, felt the flesh of her body against the back of his hand. The weight of the bottle slowly pulled down his arm. Smooth firm buttocks — totally unlike Julia’s, which sagged a little — did not flinch at the passing of fingers made impotent by the bottle they held.

  “God!” he whispered, throat choked with lust. “I wish I could hold on to you for the rest of my life …”

  She laughed, her voice hoarse as his own, and stepped away, pulling him after her... “But that’s your second wish,” she said.

  Second wish … Second wish? He stumbled and almost fell, was caught and held upright, felt fingers busy at his jacket, the buttons of his shirt. Not at all cold, he shivered, and deep inside a tiny voice began to shout at him, growing louder by the moment, shrieking terrify­ing messages into his inner ear.

  His second wish!

&nb
sp; Naked he stood, suddenly alert, the alcohol turning to water in his system, the unbelievable looming real and immense and immediate as his four sound senses compen­sated for voluntary blindness.

  “There,” she said. “And now you may remove your blindfold!”

  Ah, but her perfume no longer masked the charnel musk beneath; her girl’s voice was gone, replaced by the dried-up whisper of centuries-shriveled lips; the hand he held was—

  Harry leapt high and wide, trying to shake off the thing that held his hand in a leathery grip, shrieking his de­nial in a black vault that echoed his cries like lunatic laughter. He leapt and cavorted, coming into momentary contact with the wall, tracing with his burning, supersensi­tive flesh the tentacled monstrosity that gloated there in bas-relief, feeling its dread embrace!

  And bounding from the wall he tripped and sprawled, clawing at the casket, which in his mind’s eye, he saw where he had last seen it at the foot of her couch. Except that now the lid lay open!

  Something at once furry and slimy-damp arched against his naked leg — and again he leapt frenziedly in dark­ness, gibbering now as his mind teetered over vertiginous chasms.

  Finally, dislodged by his threshing about, his blindfold — the red mask and black silk handkerchief he no longer dared remove of his own accord — slipped from his face … And then his strength became as that of ten men, be­came such that nothing natural or supernatural could ever have held him there in that nighted cave beneath black ruins.

  Herr Ludovic Debrec heard the roaring of the car’s engine long before the beam of its headlights swept down the black deserted road outside the inn. The vehicle rocked wildly and its tires howled as it turned an impossibly tight corner to slam to a halt in the inn’s tiny courtyard.

  Debrec was tired, cleaning up after the day’s work, preparing for the morning ahead. His handful of guests were all abed, all except the English Herr. This must be him now, but why the tearing rush? Peering through his kitchen window, Debrec recognized the car — then his weary eyes widened and he gasped out loud. But what in the name of all that… ? The Herr was naked!

  The Hungarian landlord had the door open wide for Harry almost before he could begin hammering upon it — was bowled to one side as the frantic, gasping, bulge-eyed figure rushed in and up the stairs — but he had seen enough, and he crossed himself as Harry disappeared into the inn’s upper darkness.

  “Mein Gott!” he croaked, crossing himself again, and yet again. “The Herr has been in that place!”

  Despite her pills, Julia had not slept well. Now, emerging from unremembered, uneasy dreams, temples throbbing in the grip of a terrific headache, she pondered the problem of her awakening. A glance at the luminous dial of her wristwatch told her that the time was ten after two in the morning.

  Now what had startled her awake? The slamming of a door somewhere? Someone sobbing? Someone crying out to her for help? She seemed to remember all of these things.

  She patted the bed beside her with a lethargic gesture. Harry was not there. She briefly considered this, also the fact that his side of the bed seemed undisturbed. Then something moved palely in the darkness at the foot of the bed.

  Julia sucked in air, reached out and quickly snapped on the bedside lamp. Harry lay naked; silently writhing on the floor, face down, his hands beneath him.

  “Harry!” she cried, getting out of bed and going to him. With a bit of a struggle she turned him on to his side, and he immediately rolled over on his back.

  She gave a little shriek and jerked instinctively away from him, revulsion twisting her features. Harry’s eyes were screwed shut now, his lips straining back from his teeth in unendurable agony. His hands held something to his heaving chest, something black and crumbly. Even as Julia watched, horrified, his eyes wrenched open and his face went slack. Then Harry’s hands fell away from his chest; in one of them, the disintegrating black thing seemed burned into the flesh of his palm and fingers. It was unmistakably a small mummified hand!

  Julia began to crawl backwards away from him across the floor; as she did so something came from behind, moving sinuously where it brushed against her. Seeing it, she scuttled faster, her mouth working silently as she came up against the wall of the room.

  The — creature — went to Harry, snatched the shriveled hand from him, turned away … then, as if on an afterthought, turned back. It arched against him for a moment, and, with the short feelers around its mouth writhing greedily, quickly sank its sharp teeth into the flesh of his leg. In the next instant the thing was gone, but Julia didn’t see where it went.

  Unable to tear her eyes away from Harry, she saw the veins in his leg where he had been bitten turn a deep, dark blue and stand out, throbbing beneath his marble skin. Carried by the now sluggish pulsing of his blood, the creature’s venom spread through him. But… poison? No, it was much more, much worse, than poison. For as the writhing veins came bursting through his skin, Harry began to melt. It went on for some little time, until what was left was the merest travesty of a man: a sticky, tarry thing of molten flesh and smoking black bones.

  Then, ignoring the insistent hammering now sounding at the door, Julia drew breath into her starving lungs — drew breath until she thought her chest must burst — and finally expelled it all in one vast eternal scream …

  The Sun, the Sea, and the Silent Scream

  I think most writers know when they’ve written ‘a good one.’ And there’s always a special pleasure in the memories that accompany or follow on from such an event. Charles L. Grant — a writer of many excellent parts and several entire persons, and an editor/anthologist to boot — rang me from the States after he read this one in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction to say, “Wow — what a story!” Coming from Charlie, that was something. And someone on the British Fantasy Society Committee told me if Fruiting Bodies hadn’t won the BFS short story award for 1989, then SS&SS surely would have.

  So in many ways — what with those two short stories, plus The Picknickers, The Pit-Yakker, No Sharks in the Med and others, and not forgetting first publication of Wamphyri! and The Source in England, and Necroscope in America — 1987-88 were very good writing and publishing years for me. Especially good when I remember that for two consecutive years I even managed to indulge my passion for the Greek Islands —

  — But not, I hasten to add, on the island in this story!

  This time of year, just as you’re recovering from Christmas, they’re wont to appear, all unsolicited, plop on your wel­come mat. I had forgotten that fact, but yesterday I was reminded.

  Julie was up first, creating great smells of coffee and frying bacon. And me still in bed, drowsy, thinking how great it was to be nearly back to normal. Three months she’d been out of that place, and fit enough now to be first up, running about after me for a change.

  Her sweet voice called upstairs: “Post, darling!” And her slippers flip-flopping out into the porch. Then those long moments of silence — until it dawned on me what she was doing. I knew it instinctively, the way you do about someone you love. She was screaming — but silently. A scream that came drilling into all my bones to shiver into shards right there in the marrow. Me out of bed like a puppet on some madman’s strings, jerked downstairs so as to break my neck, while the silent scream went on and on.

  And Julie standing there with her head thrown back and her mouth agape, and the unending scream not coming out. Her eyes starting out with their pupils rolled down, staring at the thing in her white, shuddering hand—

  A travel brochure, of course …

  Julie had done Greece fairly extensively with her first husband. That had been five or six years ago, when they’d hoped and tried for kids a lot. No kids had come; she couldn’t have them; he’d gone off and found someone who could. No hard feelings. Maybe a few soft feelings.

  So when we first started going back to Greece, I’d suggested places they’d explored together. Maybe I was looking for far-away expressions on her face in the sunsets,
or a stray tear when a familiar bousouki tune drifted out on aromatic taverna exhalations. Somebody had taken a piece of my heart, too, once upon a time; maybe I wanted to know how much of Julie was really mine. As it happened, all of her was.

  After we were married, we left the old trails behind and broke fresh ground. That is, we started to find new places to holiday. Twice yearly we’d pack a few things, head for the sunshine, the sea, and sometimes the sand. Sand wasn’t always a part of the package, not in Greece. Not the golden or pure white varieties, anyway. But pebbles, marble chips, great brown and black slabs of volcanic rock sloping into the sea — what odds? The sun was always the same, and the sea …

  The sea. Anyone who knows the Aegean, the Ionian, the Mediterranean in general, in between and around Turkey and Greece, knows what I mean when I describe those seas as indescribable. Blue, green, mother-of-pearl, turquoise in that narrow band where the sea meets the land: fantastic! Myself, I’ve always liked the colours under the sea the best. That’s the big bonus I get, or got, out of the islands: the swimming, the amazing submarine world just beyond the glass of my facemask, the spearfishing.

  And this time — last time, the very last time — we settled for Makelos. But don’t go looking for it on any maps. You won’t find it; much too small, and I’m assured that the British don’t go there any more. As a holiday venue, it’s been written off. I’d like to think I had something, everything, to do with that, which is why I’m writing this. But a warning: if you’re stuck on Greece anyway, and willing to take your chances come what may, read no further. I’d hate to spoil it all for you.

  So … what am I talking about? Political troubles, un­finished hotel apartments, polluted swimming pools? No, nothing like that. We didn’t take that sort of holiday, any­way. We were strictly ‘off-the-beaten-track’ types. Hence Makelos.

  We couldn’t fly there direct; the island was mainly a flat-topped mountain climbing right out of the water, with a dirt landing strip on the plateau suitable only for Sky vans. So it was a packed jet to Athens, a night on the town, and in the mid-morning a flying Greek matchbox the rest of the way. Less than an hour out of Athens and into the Cyclades, descending through a handful of cotton-wool clouds, that was our first sight of our destination.