'48

As if sensing me on the other side, a muffled female voice called softly: 'Hoke, please let me in.'

Quickly turning the key, I opened the door a few inches. I could see only a shadow outside in the hall.

'Please,' she repeated, and I could tell she was close to tears.

I stood aside, pulling the door open a little wider, and Muriel slipped through the gap. The moment the door was shut tight again and I'd turned to face her, she was in my arms, her slender body shivering despite the night's warmth.

I resisted at first, remained stiff, unyielding, gun hand still raised towards the ceiling, the palm of my other hand wavering inches from her back. Then I smelt her sweet perfume and I remembered what a woman's embrace was like. My hand closed against her back, pulling her towards me, and I lowered the gun to my side. I breathed in the aroma of her freshly washed hair, then the scent she'd used on her skin, on her neck, her breasts. I even enjoyed the faint taint of wine still on her lips. A pressure inside me was released, the tightness in my chest loosened. I held on to her for a moment, maybe a few moments, and closed my eyes. My mind reeled in her presence.

It had been so long, so very long...

But the numbness within returned, the rejection of true feelings that was my only defence against the terrible thing that had happened to the world and to me overrode those stirring emotions: I stepped away from her. In the silvery light from the window, I saw the glistening of tears on her cheeks and I saw the confusion in her eyes.

'Hold me,' she asked in a hushed voice.

I couldn't. I didn't want to. I knew if I took her back into my arms I'd lose something that had kept me together these past three years, the detachment I'd come to wear like a suit of armour. I did not want to become vulnerable again.

Her bare shoulders were trembling still and the moonlight shimmered off the silk slip she wore. She watched, her tears catching that same light so that crystals seemed to shine from their trails, then slowly lowered her head.

'I'm so afraid,' she said.

And I gave in, so easily, so goddamn willingly.

Her weeping dampened my naked chest and I felt tiny spasms jerk her whole body with each sob she uttered.

Take it easy,' I said to her quietly, at a loss for any other words of comfort 'We're safe here.'

Her hair was sensuous against my skin. 'I saw them, Hoke,' I heard her say. 'There were so many.'

'Who? Who did you see?'

She lifted her head to gaze up at me. 'I saw their spirits. The people who died in this hotel -I saw their spirits wandering the hallways and corridors. I saw them on the stairways, lost souls, just' drifting, with nowhere to go. It was so sad, Hoke, so pitiful - and so frightening.'

'I told you all not to leave your rooms tonight.' My anger was false, a diversion from what she was telling me, because I didn't want to hear such things. Memories were enough to cope with.

'I had to get out. I needed to see more of this place, perhaps only to revisit better days. Can't you understand that?'

I shook my head. 'It was a stupid thing to do.'

She wasn't listening. 'I went as far as the main stairway, the one by the lift. They were just shadows at first, a shifting in the dark, until they began to emerge, slowly at first, as if my own concentration was helping them take form. Then they were all around me, drifting, floating, and oblivious to each other. Even for those who were together, elegant women in long, flowing dresses on the arms of men in dinner jackets and winged collars, there appeared to be no contact between them. But the anguish in their eyes, the misery in their features.. .' Her head rested against my chest once more. 'Was it only my imagination, Hoke? Or were they real...?'

'A dream, that's all,' I told her as I held her tight, my arms pressed against her back, the gun now awkward in my hand.

'But I wasn't sleeping,' I heard her murmur.

'Illusions, then. Don't you get it? The shock of seeing all those corpses earlier today is still messing with your head. Believe me, I know about it, Muriel, I've been there myself. You, me, Cissie, old Albert Potter, and the German - we're the only living, breathing things in this hotel.'

'I didn't say they were living-'

'There are no ghosts.' She jumped at the anger in my voice. 'The dead are dead. Anything else is fantasy.

You understand, Muriel, you understand?'

My free hand was gripping her upper arm and she flinched at its sudden pressure. She tried to pull away.

'Okay, okay, I'm sorry,' I soothed, annoyed at myself for letting her wild talk get to me. 'Just relax now and try to put those thoughts out of your mind. They'll fade away eventually, I promise you. They'll fade away for good.'

Her body seemed to sag and she leaned back into me, her hands down by her sides, her weight against my chest I let her weep, my hand stroking her hair, and soon I became aware of the hardened tips of her small breasts through the thin silky slip, nudging my skin, arousing feelings I'd long since subdued. I fought against it, against yearnings that had been denied for so many years, aware that it was wrong, the wrong time, the wrong circumstances. And afraid she would be repelled.

Her weeping had stopped and she suddenly became taut once more, as though aware of what was happening. But instead of pulling away, she relaxed into me and the contact between us took on a new intensity. The very air around us seemed charged, as though an electric storm was gathering inside that cluttered bedroom. Impossible, but it seemed so real, and I soon realized that energy was building inside our own bodies and not in the atmosphere outside them. For me it became a kind of agony, an ecstatic craving that battled against other emotions, feelings and memories that would not be cast aside, not just for this, not just for - the image appeared stark and horrifying in my mind, her body lying there on stone steps, her belly torn open ... I tried to block the thought, but still the horror of it lingered.

'Hoke?'

Now I was the one who trembled, the one who fought back tears and turned away.

Muriel held my arms and shook me gently. 'What is it? What's wrong?' she said.

'Ifs okay,' I lied, suppressing the dread inside. 'It's nothing.'

'For a moment I thought you'd seen the ghosts too.'

'I told you, there are no ghosts.'

'Then why were you afraid just now?'

'It wasn't fear.'

'No?'

'No.'

'So why are you shivering?'

There was only one way to stop her questions. I kissed her. Hard. Angrily.

And she responded, pressing her lips just as hard against mine, as if there was a fury in her longings also, a fierce aching that had been there for a long time. We fought against each other in a battle that was for fulfilment, not conquest, each of us clinging so that flesh touched flesh and desire met with desire. It was a struggle that required an outcome and we both knew it.

She drew her head away and whispered something. I became still and looked at her questioningly.

'I need more,' she said, her voice barely audible over our gasps for breath. 'I need to lie next to you.'

I hardly hesitated, because any resistance was gone, lost in those first few moments. After wiping away the rivulets of tears from her cheeks with the thumb of one hand I led her to the bed and lowered her onto the wrinkled sheet. She kept her arms around my neck as I left the gun on the bedside cabinet and I took in her scent, not the perfume she'd found in her suite, nor the soap she'd used on her hair, but the aroma of her womanhood, of her arousal. The sheet beneath us was an unblemished white in the moonlight and her skin was of that same whiteness; the slip she wore was a shade darker, its reflections soft and silvery. Only by closing my mind to the past could I release myself to the present, and the vision of Muriel lying there, her arms outstretched to receive me, her legs slightly parted, one knee raised, helped me banish that other time. We needed each other badly and any reservation was swiftly put aside.