“No. It couldn’t have been more than three years old when it fell in that hole. God knows how long the parents looked for it, or how many years ago it happened. I get the impression of decades, but it knew neither day or night, just unending gloom. Maybe the child’s hips were broken, so that it couldn’t walk, and had to crawl around on the floor of the cave.
“It ate frogs, snakes, lizards... who knows what it ate? But imagine what it would be to grow up in total darkness. You wouldn’t have any sense of your body. You wouldn’t be aware of your mouth, eyes, lips, teeth. You could be a sludge, a pool, a gas, a thought. Unable to walk or see or talk, you would develop your nonphysical powers to a fantastic degree. Can I have another drink, love?”
I filled the glass and put it in her hand. Ann drained it in three swallows and gave it back.
“Helps me wall off part of myself,” she mumbled. “People do that. They put a brick wall over what they don’t want to see, and it just gets bigger and bigger. I’m gonna take a li’l nap, sweetheart. Don’t go ’way.”
Ann’s eyes closed, and her head flopped to one side. Her lower lip, hung open, and I heard the soft snore of alcohol-induced slumber. I hoped it would give her a few hours’ rest. I don’t know what the night’s events had done to her nerves, but mine were jumping like cats in a gunny-sack.
I turned on the dresser lamp and sat in an armchair, programmed to jump and hold her down if the light so much as flickered. After awhile she started muttering, and I went over and put my ear to her lips.
“I live in a hole. I see lights at the top of the world. Animals come, fall in. I eat. Learn. Man comes! He sucks on bubble-shape, drinks blood. I do not know this blood. It makes him fall. His mind breaks into little pieces. I gather up the pieces and make him get up, walk around. It is good. I like the feel of earth moving under my feet.
“I cannot return to my old body. No matter. That body does not walk. Legs too small. It has no eyes to see, no teeth to eat live flesh. Only what is long dead. You think of me evil. Not evil. Buzzard not evil when eat dead cow. Being is. I am. I find forms that others make. Now I know to break minds into little pieces. I pinch out each little I am and put myself there. I eat more now. I grow strong. I will grow stronger...”
“What do you want?” I whispered.
“...Life. Life. I was cheated. I want... to live. I want to play in the sun and drop the handkerchief. I know of these things. I have the thoughts which come in to me, I know of cars and radios and flat people who dance on funny glass...”
The light went out. I heard screams and the shriek of breaking glass from the bar at the front of the motel. I heard the pounding of feet down the hall, and I threw myself on top of Ann and held her down on the bed. The door thundered, something-hard was striking it, perhaps a rifle butt. I stayed where I was, watching the door, holding my breath, waiting for the shots which would shatter the lock.
They didn’t come. The footsteps moved down the hall. I heard the rear door open and wheeze shut. A few minutes later the lights came on.
I rolled off Ann. She sat up, brushed her hair out of her eyes, and stared at me. “It was out there,” she said.
“Where is it now?”
“It walked off into the woods. I could go talk to it.”
“You’re crazy,” I told her.
“No, listen. Life is a unity. There is no evil outside the mind. This creature has never known anything but darkness. It doesn’t know about the higher worlds. It thinks this is all there is. If I could find it, tell it how to break out...”
“It would kill you first.”
“I don’t think so. I think I could conquer its will. Anyway, what are the alternatives? Somebody will kill Westlake. Then that person will be possessed until he in turn is killed. It would just go on and on. Isn’t that a terrible thing to think of? My way is the only way, believe me. Risk one life to save many. Isn’t that a beautiful principle?”
“I don’t object to the principle. But it’s your life, it’s not a matter of principle.”
“Then what are you going to do?”
“Not a damn thing,” I told her. “At least until it gets day-light. We’re staying right in this room.”
Ann gave a long sigh. “All right. Pour me another drink. The vibes in this joint are a shrieking jangle.”
Soberly she held out her glass and didn’t pull it away until I’d poured it full. I screwed the cap on the bottle and watched her down half the glass and then blink back tears.
“You’re not a regular juicer, are you?”
Ann shook her head. “Only when I work. Or rather, when I’m trying to rest.” She raised her glass and looked through the amber. “I sensitize myself in order to work. When I try to relax, I pick up emanations from everyone — waitresses, bartenders, people on the street. There’s a lot of hate in the world, Fred. This helps to blanket the impressions.”
“Does it bother you to be around me? Don’t I emanate anything?”
“Yes. Love. It’s very restful. Healing.”
I looked down, feeling the blood rush to my neck. The bite on my throat burned like the sting of a fire-ant. To change the subject I asked: “What do you do when you’re not spook-hunting?”
“I have a little house on a cliff in the Canaries. No electricity, no appliances. Just me and the sea.”
“You’re like those spooks you’re chasing.”
“There’s not much difference really. They’ve lost their physical bodies, but I still have mine. Otherwise we’re the same. You are too, you know. Trouble is most people live completely on the physical plane. They choke off their astral body, it grows twisted, warped... sometimes insane. Like the one we’re looking for now. Ugh. Look, just talking about it, I get goose-bumps.”
I slid my hands over Ann’s forearms. They felt like course sandpaper. Sparks of body electricity crackled between us.
I poured her another drink and moved to a chair. She lay on the bed and we talked. Instinct told me that her will to live needed to be reinforced, so I asked about her past.
XI
Ann hadn’t had what you’d call a family life. Mother and father divorced early, mother descended from some wealthy clan. She’d spent her life in gilt-edged institutions, girl’s schools and summer camps where one sought to learn the impracticaclass="underline" horsemanship, music, drama, the arts...
She rejected all, had no interest in boys, did not marry. Her income of twenty thousand a year came without effort, from rents on property she’d never seen, interest on bonds she had never purchased.
She didn’t think of herself as parasitic; the certainties of life were food, clothing, warmth and the respect of tradesmen and workers. She had no concept of class; being a member of the wolf family, she could never understand the rabbit’s fear of wolves.
I didn’t bother to propagandize her. She rejected life on this earth as meaningless because she was not involved in the struggle for food and shelter. I was willing to admit that she had been excused from the moiling toil in order to pursue higher things, but what about others who had to supress their spiritual talents in order to scratch in the dungheap?
Ann said, “Show me one and I’ll help him.”
So I told her about my practice, how I tried to balance out my term as prosecutor by defending drunks, long-hairs, unwed mothers and other social outcasts.
She said this was my task, she thought that if I’d been meant to work on the spiritual plane then I’d have been born with a free conscience.
Maybe she was right. Anyway that’s how we passed the time until daylight. I felt like I’d been dragged through a rose bush when we finally left the room for coffee and breakfast. As we passed the bar, I saw the door hanging on one hinge, with plywood nailed up where the glass had been.