Ghostlands

FIFTY-ONE

Crouching like a gargoyle on the high ledge of the Aaron Copland building under the silent moon, Theo Siegel looked down upon the rolling expanse of malignant light.

I’ve got to get through that, he thought, and I can’t do it like this. I’ve got to speed things up.

And there was only one way he knew that might do that.

His fingernails were growing sharper, becoming almost like claws. With one hand, he reached back to his neck, felt the hard bump under the skin where Jeff had implanted the jeweled ring that had kept him human, that might still be doing what it could to hold on to the remnant of his humanity….

He gritted his teeth, and with one fierce motion, slashed open the skin.

He threw the ring, glinting in the moonlight, far out across the sky.

Then, changing, he set off for the cupola. For Melissa.

All Melissa Wade knew was that she hurt. She hurt, and she burned. And she felt light, as light as a dandelion clock (she’d learned that term from her departed English professor dad, with his love of words and mechanisms; funny that such a delicate thing would have a name that conjured up wheels and gears), almost as light as the air itself.

As in a dream, she’d come here from the Sculpture Garden, to the place she invariably went when she was troubled. Her aerie, she called it. The little observatory on campus.

Sitting on the floor in a litter of sidereal charts and astronomy journals, she heard an echoing, metallic knock, and at first glanced foggily at the door. But then she realized the sound had come from above, and looked up.

A figure was peering down at her from around the open lip of the dome beside the telescope, silhouetted against the night sky.

“Melissa?” it rasped, in a guttural voice that sounded somehow familiar. The figure climbed in, began scurrying down the roof of the dome, upside down, like an immense spider.

She felt a distant horror, but could not command herself to move.

But as the creature approached and gazed down at her with immense, gentle eyes, despite the terrible alteration she recognized him.

“Hello, Theo,” she said.

Theo had seen people turn into flares before. Melissa was going through the process at a terribly rapid rate. Already, her skin seemed nearly transparent. She held her hands palm-flat to the floor, as if she were afraid of losing contact with the planet. Her golden eyes were luminous in the shadow of the telescope.

“Melissa,” he said.

Her attention flickered but held.

She said, “What happened?”

“The Spirit Radio. It won’t turn off, and it’s letting something through.”

“Is that why we’re…changing?”

As if on cue, Theo felt a spasm clench the muscles of his legs as the bones slowly morphed. Tendons coiled, skin flexed and loosened. The persistent itch grew worse. At least the ragged wound at the back of his neck, the self-inflicted gash he’d made, was healing fast. Along with the night vision and superhuman strength, it was one of the perks of his growing nonhuman status.

“We need Jeff to fix us again,” Melissa whispered.

“Melissa…he’s gone.”

“No…”

“Melissa, I saw it. It got him.” Whatever It was…

“He’ll come,” she murmured, half delirious. “He always does.”

True enough on past occasions, for good or ill, and mostly ill. But Theo felt reasonably certain all bets were off now.

At the back of the cupola was a small maintenance room with a window overlooking Philosopher’s Walk and the campus quad.

“Is the window open?” Melissa asked with trepidation.

“No,” Theo said.

With an incredible effort of will, she rose to her feet in a series of halting motions that were painful to watch, and hobbled over to the window.

He understood why Melissa was cautious of the window. She was afraid she would forget about gravity and loft away like a child’s balloon. He pictured her adrift among the stars. One more distant light in the sky.

At the window, she stood with her hands against the sill and her eyes resolutely fixed on the campus. “Hold me down,” she said. “I’m dizzy. Anchor me.”

Tentatively, Theo stood behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, as he had longed to do on so many days past.

The heat of her was shocking. He pressed himself against her.

She watched through the window for Jeff.

His own pain increased, along with a foggy sleepiness that became irresistible. After a time he slid down to the floor, his arms still loosely wrapped around Melissa’s feverish ankles, and closed his eyes.

When he woke, she was gone.

In his panic, Theo looked to the window. But the window was still sealed. He saw his own reflection in the glass. Saw the whiteness of his eyes, the gray maggot skin, the glinting sharp teeth. The image was mesmerizing, and appalling.

His mind felt blunted, and he wondered with a thrill of fear how much longer he might be able to think.

Even now, words were coming more slowly to his mind, like hieroglyphs carved in sandstone being eroded by the wind. Words fading to a fine, flat geometric plain.

Outside on Philosopher’s Walk, he saw that the glowing sea of infection had settled, muted down to cover each surface like a coating of Christmas flocking on a tree. He spied a figure shambling away from the physics wing, and knew from the shape of him and the familiar way he moved, favoring his right leg, that it was Jeff.

And hurrying to catch him, half running, half floating over the eerie, arc-lit blue of the grass, was Melissa.

As she reached him, he turned to her.

Seeing him fully now at last, she began to scream.