And the air was finally beginning to loosen—apparently he had given the right answer.
Josephine saw that her shot had somehow missed Crawford—had he actually leaped out of the way?—and she slumped limply, releasing the pistol. Several seconds later her knees and the pistol bumped against the snow-dusted stone.
She remembered the procedure her night-visiting friend had told her about, the alternative to shooting Crawford; she had been confident that the pistol would make it unnecessary, and in any case she wasn’t sure how well it would work in this strange, red-lit, slowed-down world—clearly her guide had never intended for her to be here—but she now had nothing else.
At least she had no self-regard to impede her.
Though her voice clogged with tears, she managed to begin pronouncing the syllables he had taught her, and the air boiled away from in front of her as if the words were a violation of the very space here—again it occurred to her that she was not using this procedure as her friend had intended.
And, as she was speaking, she pulled the goggles off her head and swung them as hard as she could against the stone. One lens broke, and she caught one of the slow-flying fragments of tinted glass, wrestled it to a stop, and then hesitantly forced it up through the air to her face.
It took every bit of her courage and resolve to do it, but her recitation of the litany didn’t even falter when she punctured her own left eye with the piece of glass.
Crawford turned now toward the person who had shot at him—and his heart sank, for he recognized her, and he wondered if he might one day have to kill her. Then he noticed the dark streak down one side of her face, and he realized that she was bleeding.
Good, he thought exhaustedly. I hope the gun blew up in her hand, I hope she’s dying.
She seemed to be pulling something out of her eye. Whatever it was, she now pressed it against the stone, and he heard her sob: “There, damn you—render yourselves visible to such as this.”
Big drops were forming on the stone now, and bulging up, as if the summit were a wet ceiling viewed upside down. Angularities began to form inside the bulges, and then Crawford was able to make out orbs with hollows like eye sockets in them.
Byron tried to walk through the slowed air, then cursed and simply began swimming; it was an awkward way to travel, and at first he propelled himself backward as often as forward, but after a few moments he had frog-kicked over to where Crawford stood.
“Who is that?” Byron demanded, treading air beside Crawford’s shoulder. “And what the hell are those things growing up around her?”
The bulges were breaking open, releasing waving stick-arms and grimacing heads that glistened nastily in the red light … but they were all grown together, so that they formed a hideous centipede-like monstrosity instead of separate figures, and half of them seemed to be partially imbedded in the rock.
“Who cares?” said Crawford, lifting his legs and spreading his arms so that he could swim too. “Let’s get back down.” He began struggling through the air toward the route they had climbed up.
After a few hard-won yards he looked back at Byron. “This slowed-time effect probably ends at the brink—don’t go sailing over the edge.”
“Him,” yelled Josephine, beyond Byron. “You’re supposed to go after him!”
Crawford focussed on her. She was trying to run through the resistant air, but she wound up simply flailing in place, several inches off the ground, and then the melted-together things had seized her and seemed to be clumsily trying to force her down against the stone—to make her into one of themselves? Were they the decrepit ghosts of people who had died up here?
May they enjoy her company, he thought grimly, turning away.
Then, horribly, the things began to speak, and he had to turn back again. “Thought you could abandon your mother, did you, slut?” chittered one of the peeled-looking heads, its voice disorientingly out of synchronization with the motions of its mouth, as several birdy hands fumbled at Josephine’s face. “After killing me! What mother wouldn’t hate a daughter who killed her even as she was trying to give the daughter life?”
“I had to marry that horrible little nonentity,” squealed another head, “it was the only way I could get away from you! And then he killed me in that inn! Thus your fault–you killed your own sister!”
Several hinged limbs had wetly wrapped around her ankles, and a nearby head added its yapping voice to the babble. “I was always hidden away in your head so that you could be Julia, or a machine, and I’ve rotted in there! You starved me, your own self, and I hate you for it!”
Josephine fell to her knees under the ungainly assault, and she rocked her head back and wailed hopelessly into the barred red sky … and just for a moment she reminded Crawford of—of whom, not Julia—of his brother, who had been pulled under the waves in the savage surf off Rame Head.
With a convulsive jackknife motion that tore his shirt against the unyielding air and punched the breath out of him, Crawford turned around and began dragging himself back through the air toward her.
CHAPTER 11
In the wind there is a voice
Shall forbid thee to rejoice;
And to thee shall Night deny
All the quiet of her sky;
And the day shall have a sun,
Which shall make thee wish it done.
—Lord Byron, Manfred
The headwind deafened him and peeled his lips back from his teeth at every forward thrust—he was glad of the goggles over his eyes—but between strokes the air was as still as stagnant water, and over his own tortured breathing he could hear a couple of the heads begin to pay attention to him. “Drinking in a pub while I was screwing another man, and drinking there still while I burned to death!” one head called to him.
Another opened its mouth just as he clawed his way forward into the wind again, and he wondered who it would claim to be. His brother? Julia again, but tailored for his despair this time?
When the wind of his forward motion abruptly stopped, he stretched his arm out ahead and managed to grab Josephine’s wrist; then he spread his legs wide to help moor himself to the air, and pulled until his lungs felt as if wires were being twisted in them, but nothing happened.
Various ghostly limbs had grown together into a sort of ectoplasmic rope below him, and a head sprouting from a thigh was winking furiously at him. “You still owe me my death,” the thing hissed. “I got your passport, and you promised!”
Crawford pulled again, and though the effort wrenched a sob out of him he heard several ghost-limbs snap. “Kick!” he gasped to Josephine.
Josephine looked up at him, and he saw a glint of recognition in her one good eye; and then she began kicking wildly at the jabbering heads, sending jawbones and fingers slowly arching away through the red light. She kept kicking the things even after she was free, and Crawford had to yank at her arm again several times to get her attention.