Title	The Wages of Sin
Author	Alex Beecroft
ISBN#	978-1-60820-125-9 (ebook)
Release Date	January 2010
Paperback:	230 pages
Available At:	MlrBooks (ebook)

Charles Latham, wastrel younger son of the Earl of Clitheroe, returns home drunk from the theatre to find his father gruesomely dead. He suspects murder. But when the Latham ghosts turn nasty, and Charles finds himself falling in love with the priest brought in to calm them, he has to unearth the skeleton in the family closet before it ends up killing them all.

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Moonlight sucked the colour from damp grass and silvered rising wisps of dew. The deer-park lay dim and still to Charles’ left, receding to a black horizon. To his right, the Latham family chapel loomed dark against the lead-colored sky.

Sultan’s hooves whispered across the verge as Charles rode past the private graveyard’s wrought iron gate and averted his eyes from the white glimmer of Sir Henry’s mausoleum. It was one thing to laugh together over newspaper reports of vampires in Prussia while reclining in the comfortable lewdness of an actor’s garret—lamps blazing, the magic revealed as greasepaint, squalor and hard work—quite another to think of it here, beneath a slice of pewter moon, in a silence so huge it annihilated him.

A fox cried. Sultan snorted, ears flicking. His own heart racing, Charles gentled the horse over the gravel drive that swept up to the white Grecian pillars of the mansion. They turned towards the stable-yard—coach houses, stalls and groom’s quarters arranged about an enclosed square, entered by a short cobbled tunnel beneath the stable-master’s rooms. Both of them balked at the darkness beneath the arch, Sultan sidestepping as Charles dismounted. He wrenched his wrist, landed with a slap and slither loud enough to conceal the footsteps of a thousand walking corpses and stood propped against the horse’s strong shoulder, gathering himself. Sultan’s warm, straw-scented breath spiralled up comfortingly into the pre-dawn sky.

“Easy there, Sultan. Nothing to worry about.”

Thanking God that no one was watching his folly, Charles slung an arm about Sultan’s neck, took the hilt of his sword in the other hand. Emboldened by the feel of it, he urged Sultan forwards, towards his own stall and rest.

In the pitch black under the gatehouse the several pints of inferior porter he had drunk at the theatre made their presence known again. The night swayed about him and the world receded, until all his reality was the horse hair and leather beneath his hands. Falling asleep on my feet. Just the state of weakness most likely to attract the devil, or his minions… Or my father.

There was a more rational threat. As he took off Sultan’s tack, fumbled around in the dark making sure the weary animal was supplied with hay and water, the thought of Ambrose Latham drove away all other terrors. “You wastrel,” his father would bellow, loud enough to echo in the kitchens and make all the servants sit up in glee. “You mother’s milk-sop boy with your clever friends and your expensive women. Do you think I built up this family’s fortune only to have it squandered by you, sirrah? Do you?”

Having drunk, Sultan nudged his shoulder, leaving a smudge of dirty water and horse-snot on the jonquil silk of his jacket, pulling him up again from his reverie. He still had to get inside without being seen, and it was now less late at night than very early in the morning. If his luck was bad, those very servants might have already begun to wake. They could be standing, watching him as he rolled through the front door with his wig in his pocket and his blond hair singed and sooty from sitting too close to Theo Tidy’s spike of tallow candles.

What did you expect, sir, when you sent me to University? That I would slake my appetite for learning in a mere three years, and be content to rusticate thereafter, among a company whose highest pinnacle of wit is to describe their new carriage for four hours together? I honour you for opening my mind to a wider world, but I cannot now go back to the provincial concerns from which you raised me.

A small pain, dull and heavy as a shotgun pellet, caught him just below the breastbone at the thought. Truth was he didn’t want to be a disappointment to Ambrose Latham, Fourth Earl of Clitheroe. He didn’t want to be a drain on his family’s resources or a blot on their reputation. But, forbidden as he was to join army or church, in case George should crack his head hunting and a spare heir be required, what else was there? If he could find some subject on which to become an authority, perhaps? If he could get himself invited by the Royal Society to give talks, his erudition the toast of newspapers and coffee-houses all over London? But what subject interested both the learned gentlemen and himself? They had no taste for plays.

Annoyed by his own hopeless thoughts, Charles nudged Sultan’s nose towards the basket of hay, reeled out of the door. By God, did he only have a choice of pathos or fear? Was he to be a coward as well as an embarrassment?

Four steps out of the stables, away from the horses’ drowsy whickering, and the answer seemed to be “yes.” Silence arched over the world like a collector’s dome pressed over a doomed insect. The shift of pebbles beneath his feet sounded obscenely loud. Something snapped a twig as it walked beneath the distant oaks, and it might have been a pistol shot. He tried to think of Theo—actor manager, wit, raconteur. If he could only have some of Theo’s relentless cheer to armour him now. It was foolish, childish, to find himself with clammy hands, muffling his breath in case it made him miss the faint noise of the creature shambling behind him… Oh damn!

He stopped, rejected the thought of returning to the stables to sleep. He was not a coward! Summoning up Theo’s filthiest anecdote, the one he didn’t fully understand, he put his head down and walked—walked mind you—out to the drive.

As he turned towards the house, Theo failed him. Charles’ imagination populated the lane behind him with horrors. What if they did exist? In this silence, anything that fed on blood should sense his heart speeding in his chest. Would they make a noise as they prowled? Would he hear anything before the creature’s hand came out of the darkness, dragged him to its insatiable mouth?

No, it was nonsense. Absolute tosh. No rational man could possibly believe… And yet, would the Prussians really send officials to dig up graves, make observations and write reports if there wasn’t something in it?

He swallowed, panting, and thought about what his father would have to say about this. But even that threat failed. Truth was he’d be glad if Clitheroe slammed open the door, lantern in hand, and gave him a piece of his mind. Please do, father. A nice long peroration to follow me up to bed and banish my own thoughts. Come down and shout at me. Please.

But the façade of the house remained shut. Did the marble portico and the sweep of stairs up to the entrance look gloomier than they had? Well, what of it? The moon must simply be going down.

Stopping again, he bit his lip until the blood flowed. Then turned. He clutched at his sword hilt, and slowly, shakily let it go. Yes, the moon had gone behind cloud. The trees of the park sighed in the wind, and that man-like pale shimmer beneath them… was only the statue of General Percival Latham attired in the robes of a Roman senator.

Leaning over to prop his hands on his knees in the weakness of relief, Charles gave a small spasm of laughter. As he did so the wind strengthened, the trees roared, and terror rose out of the ground around him like a fog. His breath hung white in the black air. Cold bit through alcoholic haze, jacket and flesh, piercing him to the bone. The skin across his shoulders and down his arms rippled as the hair stood up, and the little voice of reason within him blew out like a candle flame.

Chest heaving, his shallow breath scorching his throat, he turned again. There was something wrong with the house; darkness oozed over it like a coating of oil. A shadow sucked away from the stone and came flooding out towards him in a whispering tide. His legs locked. His bowels froze. He lifted an arm to push the black tide away, and so it touched his hand first. Burning cold. Faintly gritty. Sticky as cobwebs. It slid up his fingers, around his palm, burrowed beneath his cuff. Clammy strands touched the inside of his elbow, the pit of his arm, and then it flowed over his face.

No! Oh God! He pinched his eyes and mouth shut. Strands of it, like the tendrils of long filthy hair, brushed across his lips. Then something groaned by his ear. He heard the wet noise of an opened mouth. Shuddering, he let out a little ‘nnn!’ of terror, groping for his sword, his hand pushing through the cloud as if through sand. The thing by his face giggled, and dust pattered on his eyelids. He bit down hard on the mounting desire to scream. God forbid he should breathe it in!

Dimly, beyond the voice whispering with gleeful hatred in his ear, came a sound like racing hooves. Was it the wind or his own blood stoppered in his breathless body thundering in his ears? Dizziness swept through him and his locked knees gave way. He staggered forward, his lungs screaming for air, agony shooting along his ribs, and thought again of Theo; that half-joking, half-challenging offer of a kiss. Maybe he should have taken the man up on it after all. Sin aside, it seemed a shame to die, never having been kissed.

His fingertips grazed his sword hilt. A final push and he could close clumsy fingers around the hilt. He drew the blade, and as he did so something hit him in the back so hard it lifted him off his feet. For a moment he thought he would crack between the two forces like a louse between fingernails. Then the night air was clean again, and with a confused rush, a red pain in his cheek and shoulder, he was suddenly lying on the drive with a face full of gravel and two men pulling at his coat.

“What? What? Did you see it?” He batted their hands away, scrambled up and made a frantic circle, searching for the thing. Was it gone? Let it be gone!

Doctor Floyd’s landau stood with lanterns swinging and open doors, all glorious green leather and brass, just in front of him. Beside him, Dr. Floyd—almost a perfect sphere in his greatcoat—reached out a glacially cautious hand as if to restrain him. Charles turned, grabbed the man by his black velvet collar and shouted again, “Did you see it!”

A colourless, fat man, whose professional life seemed to have prematurely embalmed him, Floyd leaned away. He blinked, slowly as a torpid lizard, while propriety and self preservation warred behind his eyes.

“We almost run you over, Mr. Charles.” Floyd’s groom spoke with the reassuring tone he used to his horses. Protectively, he interposed his beaming red face between Charles and his master, put a gnarled but gentle hand on Charles’ wrist. “What you doing out here in the road in the dark anyway? Come to get us, was you? You’d’ve done better wait in the hall.”

Charles shook his head, tried to speak and could not force words past the chattering of his teeth. His grip on the Doctor’s coat gave way, and he would have fallen if the two men had not moved in and caught him in their practiced grip.

“The blanket, Sam, and less of your chatter. Here, Mr. Charles, take a drink of this.”

A heavy blanket around his shoulders and a long drink of brandy later, Charles let Sam tuck him into the corner of the carriage, concentrated on trying to stop trembling. As he did so, Floyd clambered in beside him.

“I’m most terribly sorry, Mr. Charles. Your brother’s message was so urgent. We weren’t expecting… And I must say I was looking towards the house. I saw nothing in the road until Jewel clipped you as she passed.”

Charles wrapped his arms around himself and chafed his biceps to get some warmth into them. Cold radiated out from the marrow of his bones. But the old felted blanket around him glowed in the lantern light with blue, yellow and red stripes, speckled with dog hair. He basked in wet dog smell, brass polish, leather wax, and Floyd’s orange-flower-water cologne. These things and the terror that had passed could not exist in the same world, surely?

“A cloud,” he said, in a reedy, shocked voice. “There was a cloud. A black cloud. It… rushed at me, and…”

“Most probably the dust cloud from the landau, sir.” Sam spoke over his shoulder as he flicked the whip encouragingly above Jewel’s ears.

“No it…”

“Yes, that would account for it. Undoubtedly why we neither of us saw the other coming.” Floyd nodded, fished out a handkerchief and wiped his cheeks and forehead with fingers only a little less unsteady than Charles’. “You, um. You fell upon your head, sir. And, mm, if my nose doesn’t guide me wrongly, have already imbibed a fair amount of… mm, conviviality. No doubt you are also distressed about your father. I think we need look no further for the cause of a temporary, understandable, overturning of the wits.”

“That’s not how it…” Charles clutched the blanket more closely, trapped a pawprint between his knee and the seat. The dried mud flaked off and scattered to the floor, and a convulsive choke of disgust forced its way out of him at the patter of falling soil. He smeared it underfoot, looked down blankly for a moment before the words finally penetrated his understanding.

The landau swept through the great curve before the marble steps of the portico. Lights now glimmered in the hall, and as they drew up George flung open the door. His candle showed a white, sickened face, its distinguished lines set in strain.

“My father?” Charles rose to his feet, holding tight to the calash of the landau as it sprayed gravel with the speed of its stop. A fist of dread tightened beneath his breastbone and the waves of shivering returned full force. “What’s wrong with…?”

George ran down the stairs. The light shone on his open shirt and bare feet as his scarlet silk banyan trailed behind him. His uncovered hair shone silver-gilt. It was the first time in years Charles had seen his brother so careless of his appearance, and his wild unconscious beauty added a new terror to the night.

Flinging down his candle, George caught Dr. Floyd as he bent to retrieve his bag and hauled him bodily out onto the grass. Floyd raised an eyebrow at the treatment, while George in turn gaped at the sight of Charles leaping down beside him.

“Oh I do have a brother then? No, say nothing, this isn’t the time. You’d best come too.”

Charles followed his brother’s impatient strides past the stone pineapples on the sweep of white stairs. Their footsteps echoed and re-echoed like a volley of rifle-fire against the chequered black and white marble of the entrance hall. A candelabrum set on a table within lit Doric pillars and the portraits of his ancestors with a bubble of amber light. The door up from the kitchen stood partially open. Blurs of white faces, above white shifts, showed ghostlike in the crack.

On the landing, George’s valet Sykes stood waiting with a candlestick in his hand, his cravat lopsided and his chin shadowed by an aggressive growth of black stubble. Another twist in the garrotte of fear about Charles’ throat. They were normally both of them so impeccable. “George! What’s…?”

“Just,” George flung up a hand, “be quiet.” He took the candle and whispered to Sykes. “Stand outside the door. Mrs. Latham’s rest is not to be disturbed under any circumstances. Should Mrs. Sheldrake awaken, you may inform her, but you will not permit her to come in.”

“I understand.”

They hurried down the passage, their feet silent now on the runner of blue and white carpet. Outside the windows at either end of the corridor, the night pressed inwards. As they stopped outside his father’s room, George dropped a hand to the doorknob and bent that exposed, vulnerable head. “I feel I ought to warn you. It isn’t… Ah. Well. See for yourself.”

Candlelight caught the cream and gold plastered walls, glittered like the ends of pins in the tassels of the bed-curtains and the gold embroidered comforter that lay in a kicked off crumple against the claw-footed legs of the bed. The fire had been made and burned clear yellow in the grate.

Soberly, imagination finally at bay, Charles did what his soldier ancestors would have expected of him. He walked forward into the line of fire, looked down.

Ambrose Latham, Earl of Clitheroe, lay on his back in his nightgown, his limbs fettered by the sheets, his swollen face purple. His open mouth brimmed with vomit. Across his nose, lips and chin the mark of a woman’s hand stood out in livid white. His nostrils were stopped with earth.

Can ghosts influence the living? Can they make a man fall in love? Help him see things in different lights? William Maltese, AM Riley and Lex Valentine weave four tales that pose these questions and answer the question, LOVE ME DEAD?

**************************

Ghost Hunters

Long Beach

AM Riley

“Ri-i-i-i-i-ta! Ri-i-i-i-i-ta!”

The voice echoed, disembodied, in the dark room. My hand tightened on the theater armrest, and something icy cold and damp touched me.

“Ah!”

“You want another beer?” whispered Rick, leaning toward me and touching the back of my hand again with the bottle.

“Sure.” My palm closed around a chilled beer bottle, still damp from the ice chest. Millers with the twist-off caps were a staple of our ghost hunting evenings. Rick carried them in a portable chest fitted with a shoulder harness. Currently the ice chest rested at his feet, and I heard the crunch of ice as Rick leaned over and got himself another bottle as well.

We were seated in the theater of the Queen Mary Hotel. It was after 11:00 p.m., the theater was closed, and the lights were shut off. The only illumination came through a ventilation grate in the far left wall. A shaft of light angling down to the dusty parquet floor, particles of who-knew-what twisting in its glow.

“Ri-i-i-i-ta.” I could see the source of the voice, Beth Ann Tomlinson, seated several rows below me, her hair a fuzzy mass in the dim light. Her husband Daniel sat beside her. I knew him by the outline of the knit cap he always wore.

Two rows down and over to the left I could discern the hunching shapes of the three Musketeers, George, Bob, and Ginger. Bob had some kind of recording device running that needed technical maintenance; I could hear it squeaking from several seats away. Ginger’s small digital camera made a sound every few minutes. She’d look through the pictures later for the translucent spherical dots that ghost hunters call ‘orbs’. A few seats beyond them were Amy and Dick, whose heads had been pressed together since the lights had gone out. Dick was known amongst we ‘die-hards’ as ‘Screaming Dick’, because of that one unfortunate night in the main engine room when a box had tumbled onto the floor behind him. He’d shrieked and run, banging his head on the portal door and, still running and screaming with the blood running down his face, had shattered the nerves of a group of people on a ghost tour of the HMS Queen Mary.

Ghost hunters don’t scream or run. REAL ghost hunters. Die-hards like us.

I let my gaze rest on the two-headed monster of Amy and Dick for just a little longer; thinking that though Dick was branded a coward, he had more courage than I did. He’d had the courage to reach across the dark abyss and take the hand of the one he wanted.

Something I hadn’t yet had the balls to do.

Rick’s elbow shoved into mine, and he leaned over so he could whisper against my ear, “It’s almost midnight. Let’s go.”

Through snow, storms and fire, love is strong and protects.  These three stories tell tales of lasting love, old love, family love and new love through it all.

Victor J. Banis, Patric Michael and P.A. Brown bring us three tales of love that endures and protects.  LORIN’S BACK by Victor J. Banis has a self-centered ghost that shows his past love that old friends can burn fire bright as lovers.  Family love and a new love conquer the glowing hell during a storm in A LIGHT OF DIFFERENT MOON by Patric Michael.  And P.A. Brown’s ghost shines his love through the snow to protect and guide a new love to his partner left behind in ANGEL LIGHT.  Through snow, storms and fire, love is strong and protects.

***************

The first time, he came for cocktails. I suppose that should not have seemed too surprising. After all, there were a dozen other people there for the same purpose and, also, ostensibly to meet my fiancée, Margo Sellers, although most of them had known her longer than I had.

So the addition of another male guest, even an unexpected one, shouldn’t have been altogether alarming. There’s usually at least one uninvited guest at every such function. However, there is nothing quite so likely to create a sensation at a cocktail party as the appearance of a male guest in the raw.

For one thing, there is the breach of etiquette to consider. It implies either a gauche ignorance on the part of the guest, or inadequate information on the part of the host. For another thing, it tends to discomfort the other guests who, at the very least, are certain to feel overdressed.

“Of all the nerve,” I thought angrily, staring in astonishment at the naked body posed in the doorway. Granted, it was quite a spectacular body, lean and hard and deliciously hung. It was annoying nonetheless. “And just like Lorin, too,” I thought.

It wasn’t until I had thought this last that the full shock hit home. It’s bad enough to have a perfectly sedate and proper get together spoiled by the entrance of a naked male who insists on playing with himself in full view of the other guests. But when that naked, dick-fondling male happens to be someone that you know beyond question has been dead for five years—that, I think, is more than any host should be expected to take in his stride.

About his death there was no question, either. I had watched them lower that same pretty body, although not in quite the same condition, into the ground.

“Paul, what on earth…?” Margo exclaimed with good reason. At the moment of Lorin’s entrance, I had been in the act of refilling her cocktail glass. In the moment or so since, I had continued to pour unceasingly, with the result that what the glass could not accommodate was now overflowing into Margot’s lap.

“Oh, I am sorry,” I cried. I righted the pitcher, but not before the front of her dress had been thoroughly soaked. She jumped up, not quite gracefully, and held her skirt out in front of her.

“I should think you are sorry. What in Heaven’s name were you thinking of?” She made fluttering little attempts to wipe away the excess with a lacy handkerchief, without much success.

“Thinking of?” I stooped down to lend a hand and my own handkerchief. I should have thought the reason for my consternation would be obvious to anyone in the room. “Why, I was looking at…”

Fortunately, I looked up just then to find the doorway empty. My eyes swept the room. All of the guests were properly trousered and skirted. Lorin was nowhere among them.

“Well, of course he couldn’t be,” I said aloud, looking back at the doorway. A dead man, after all, could not be attending a cocktail party in any state of dress—or undress, as the case might be.

“Who couldn’t be?” Margo asked, bringing me back to the present moment. I looked up to find her staring at me with an expression of bewilderment, which no doubt was entirely justified.

“Oh, nothing.” I busied myself with making the stain on her dress worse than it had been to begin with. Whatever had caused my weird mirage—and that was all it could have been—I certainly was not going to make a complete fool of myself by telling anyone else about it. I had a notion as to how this group would react if I told them about seeing a naked dead man in the doorway, shaking his cock at me in a lewd manner.

“Paul, are you all right?” Margo asked.

“Well, of course I’m all right.” I gave up on the stain as a bad job and stood. I had set the cocktail pitcher on the table beside us, and I retrieved it now and started to fill my own glass. “Just because I happened to spill a drink,” I began—and there he was again, this time leaning against the back of a chair just beyond Margo, his now stiff rod pointed at the back of her head for all the world as though he meant to shoot into her wispy coiffure.

I don’t know what my expression must have been. For a moment I was struck dumb. I stayed that way until Margo fairly squealed, “Paul!”

I blinked and looked at her, to discover that I had managed to pour the rest of the martinis down the front of her dress. By this time, she was actually dripping on the carpet.

“Oh, God,” I said. I put the pitcher down on the side table with such unwarranted force that it shattered. Ice cubes and splinters of glass went flying in all directions. “Here, let me…”

“No, never mind.” She brushed me away with a nervous laugh. “I think I had better go upstairs and try to repair the damage as best I can. It’s a Givenchy, too. Darling, are you sure… how many drinks have you had, anyway? I haven’t been watching.”

“Only a couple,” I mumbled, but in fact I was not really paying her much attention. I was looking around the room, stupidly. Of course he was gone again. He had disappeared the moment Margo shouted.

I rubbed my hand over my forehead. I didn’t feel as though I had a fever, and I certainly had not been drinking that much. However much it took to create that sort of hallucination, I was sure I hadn’t had it. I made a mental note to talk to my doctor about this. Somehow the idea of having hallucinations of any sort didn’t sound healthy, notwithstanding that I had been feeling perfectly healthy of late. Something had to be wrong. Normal people just didn’t see these things—or, if they did, they had to a man neglected to tell me about it.

“Maybe I’d better take an aspirin,” I decided aloud. By this time, needless to say, I had made myself the object of some very puzzled stares.

“Look, maybe it’s time we should be clearing out of here,” one of the men said, laying a most solicitous hand on my shoulder.

Far from being grateful for the gesture, I was annoyed at being treated as though I were in my cups. Whatever was wrong with me, it was not a result of drinking. I still felt in control of my senses, or reasonably so, at least.

“Don’t be silly. Why don’t you all just go ahead and enjoy yourselves? You know where the liquor is. Give me five minutes to get some pills working and I’ll be back in full gear, all right?”

With my best air of nonchalance, I nodded around the room and made my way to the stairs. It was a relief to have a minute to myself to try to collect my scattered thoughts. In the bathroom, I shook two aspirin into my hand, swallowed them, and followed them down with a chaser of cold water. After that, I went into my bedroom and lay across the bed, letting my head hang down over the edge. Someone had told me once that it was good for the circulation. What they had not told me was that poor circulation would produce visions—lewd visions, at that.

Lorin Gebhard. The name echoed in my consciousness. What on earth had brought him to my mind, tonight of all nights? Not, of course, that he wasn’t entitled to some place there, if I was to be perfectly fair. After all, he had once fully occupied all of my thoughts and emotions—but that had been five years ago, and during those years he had been gradually but firmly relegated to one of those dim corners that one only peeks into occasionally.

Why on earth had he come bounding out of that corner tonight and into the middle of my cocktail party?

“Well, there’s a perfectly logical reason for it, now that I give it some thought,” I told myself, closing my eyes for a moment. For one thing, I was only a few weeks away from my marriage to Margo. It probably wasn’t too surprising that that should bring to mind my other “marriage,” to Lorin, even if I had never heard of a similar case.

I had to smile at the word “marriage.” Even in the homosexual sense, marriage didn’t quite seem to describe the relationship we’d had. It was more like a roller coaster ride, a flight with Dorothy in a cyclone, an acid trip—and then had come the shock of his death. How ironic that Lorin, who had always boasted that he had never found anything so big that he couldn’t get it down his throat, should have choked to death on something so small as a diamond, and one from his own cufflink at that, which had accidentally fallen into his drink. I always thought he would have been pleased to know what an expensive instrument Fate had chosen for his death. He had never done anything in an ordinary fashion.

There had been the predictable shock, of course, and a large measure of grief, but in all honesty, over a period of time, I had become gradually aware of another feeling: a sense of relief.

Lorin had been wild and wonderful, and I had been crazy about him. He could be fun, witty, entertaining. He was a magnificent sex partner—handsome, well hung, truly uninhibited. The truth was, however, he had been just too much for any one man—probably too much for a dozen men.

God knows, he’d had more than a dozen while he had been with me. For every wonderful gesture, there had been a score of disastrous or horrifying acts that had made my hair stand on end, and turned some of it gray in the process. For every moment that I had loved him, there had been hours when I’d gladly have shoved that fatal diamond down his throat myself. I didn’t really regret any of the months we had been together, but eventually, and only when I was by myself, I had to admit the simple fact that I wasn’t altogether sorry it was in the past.

It was in the past, too. That was the important thing just now. It was irrevocably in the past. Lorin was dead, and he certainly could not have been tripping around the party downstairs in the altogether, although it was the sort of stunt he’d have been likely to pull when he was alive. I had merely experienced some sort of hallucination, probably brought about by the lobster Newburg the night before, which had always done a number on my tummy. Now that I called it to mind, I even thought at the time it had tasted a bit strange.

I felt a light hand at my temples. Margo apparently had slipped quietly into the room to see how I was feeling. I sighed and reached for her hand. Dull though she sometimes was, she was thoughtful.

“I’m all right now, darling,” I assured her gratefully.

“I’m so glad. You looked just dreadful downstairs.”

The voice was not Margo’s. It was every bit as masculine as the hand I had clasped. I felt a shiver zigzag its way up my spine. I didn’t have to open my eyes to identify the voice or the hand. The truth was, I didn’t even much want to open my eyes at all. They more or less opened of their own accord.

It was him, of course. He smiled as my eyes opened, and winked, just the way he had always greeted me before. “Hello, darling,” he said, leaning over to kiss me.

I ducked. This was carrying indigestion a bit too far, to my way of thinking, and I was not about to start necking with undigested lobster Newburg.

“Now, wait a minute,” I stammered, managing to get to my feet on the opposite side of the bed. “Stay away from me, you… you…” I couldn’t, in my consternation, decide just what to call him. I didn’t want to be tactless, after all.

“Tiger,” he supplied with a mischievous grin. Fortunately he did not try to follow me to my side of the bed. At least, he hadn’t yet.

“Tiger?”

“That’s what you used to call me. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.”

“I haven’t forgotten. But you aren’t you.” I paused for a second or two to stare at him. Blond hair. Flashing blue eyes. Large endowment, soft now but still impressive. He certainly looked like him. “Are you?” I added faintly.

“Well, of course, who else?”

“You can’t be,” I said, shaking my head stubbornly. “You’re gone.”

“How can I be gone when I’m here?”

“What I mean is, you…” But I still couldn’t think of a nice way to put it.

“Crossed over. That’s the term we like to use with one another. No one wants to be called dead, not to his face, anyway. It has an unpleasant ring to it, don’t you think?”

It sounded reasonable, all right, but then, I had never before talked to anybody who was really dead, in the literal sense.

“Well, what are you doing crossing back? I didn’t think that was allowed.”

He got up off the bed, but still on the other side. For a hallucination, he was certainly authentic. Standing, moving, every detail, every gesture was Lorin. He turned slightly, and there was that funny little dimple at the small of his back, just above his cheeks, that I had loved to kiss on my way down.

“Sometimes it is,” he said, looking around the room. “Don’t you have any cigarettes?”

“Do you smoke?” I found it hard to imagine a mirage puffing on a cigarette. That seemed to credit lobster Newburg with quite a bit.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I was just going to find out. This is my first trip, you know, and it’s been so long since I had a cigarette.”

“I left mine downstairs. Look, why don’t you just make yourself comfortable and I’ll run down and get them.” I edged toward the door, contemplating the possibilities of escape, at least for a moment.

“Oh, don’t bother. There’ll be plenty of time to try that later.”

I came to a halt. “Later? Do you mean you plan to stay around for a while?”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Well, don’t look so dismayed at the prospect, love. I can remember when you wanted nothing so much as to have me with you.”

“That was before.”

“Have things changed so much?” He started around the bed toward me.

“Don’t touch me,” I ordered, shrinking back against the wall.

“Don’t be a goose. I feel just exactly like I always did. Which, if you’ll recall, was rather nice. See?” He put out a hand and touched my cheek very lightly with one finger. I had to admit that it didn’t feel at all ghostly. At least, it was not what I would have expected “ghostly” to feel like.

“You feel, well, real,” I said hesitantly.

“Of course. But I don’t always. Look.” He waved his hand right through my arm without my feeling a thing. This was much more what one expected a ghost to be. I had a violent case of goose pimples.

“If you have any sort of control over that, I think I would just as soon you stayed solid. It’s less disquieting, you understand.”

“No problem. The hard part, actually, is staying visible. It’s easier with you because of our, shall we say, closeness. A matter of rapport, in a manner of speaking. That’s why you saw me downstairs but nobody else did. They weren’t on my wavelength. That’s putting it rather crudely, but you’d never understand the terms we use.”

“You mean no one but me can see you?” This was at least some comfort.

“Not unless I really work at it. Probably in time I’ll get better at it. That’s what others have told me who have made the trip. But it takes a lot of concentration, and just now I don’t think I could manage it for more than a short time.”

“Please, don’t manage it on my account,” I said quickly. “I’m confused enough in my own mind without having to explain to everyone else downstairs what you’re doing here. Which brings me back to the point. How did you manage to come back? And why?”

“Well, the how was a bit sticky. I’d applied for a pass a long time ago, just to come back and visit you, but there is so much red tape involved. You can’t imagine. It just goes on forever. Then, when I heard about this marriage of yours, to that creature…”

“You mean Margo?”

“Who else are you marrying, pray tell, Moby Dick?”

“How on earth did you hear about it, anyway? I shouldn’t have thought you got newspapers over there.”

He grinned and wagged a finger at me. “Now you’re getting confused with your terminology. It wasn’t on earth, you see. But if you must know, it was Walter King. He brought all the details with him.”

“Oh, that’s right,” I said, remembering. “Walter did die—excuse me, pass over recently.”

“How did he go, by the way? He’s been giving us the most elaborate tales about a Texas oil millionaire and a speeding Rolls Royce, which no one believes for a minute. I promised some of the girls I’d get the—pardon the expression—straight story while I was here.”

I couldn’t help smiling. Gossip, it seemed, was immortal, especially among queens. “I’m afraid it wasn’t anything nearly so glamorous,” I said, glad for the chance to get back at Walter King, who had knifed me plenty of times—rest his soul. “It seems there had been a prowler in his neighborhood who was inclined to molest the ladies while he robbed them. So, Walter said that if people were being molested, he was going to leave his back door wide open and a sign up to show where it was.”

“I shouldn’t have thought a sign was necessary, the people who have been through that one’s back door. God knows, if he had ever shown it to me, I’d probably have crossed over a year sooner from the shock.”

“At any rate, he left the door open, and they found him the next day, stone cold but smiling from ear to ear. Do you know, they never could get that grin off his face? It gave an odd impression at the funeral. They caught the man, by the way. He said it was an accident.”

“Going to bed with Walter would be. But I hope they hang him. He sounds like someone we could use over where I am. All those goody-two-shoes.”

I smiled. Then I remembered. “You’ve gotten me off the subject again, damn it. We were talking about why you came back.”

“But I explained that. When I heard about this farce of a marriage, I figured I was needed in a hurry, so I just came anyway, without waiting for all that red tape.”

“Then you’re sort of AWOL?”

“Not quite.” Lorin cocked his head to one side. I recognized that gesture. He had always used it when he was about to excuse his actions. “Actually, I borrowed a pass from another guy. He wasn’t too awfully keen on using it himself, and he had taken sort of a shine to me, so we worked out a little trade, to use an appropriate phrase.”

I said, dryly, “Still using the same old worm for bait, I see.”

“Don’t be insulting. I don’t think worm is a very appropriate word.”

“Whatever word you use, it’s still hustling. And you’re wasting your efforts anyway. I don’t see what my marriage has to do with you.”

“It’s preposterous, that’s what it has to do with me. In the first place, you could think of my social standing. Everyone is giggling and saying it’s because I was a drab that you’re giving up the normal life and marrying a woman. Besides, I can’t be expected just to sit around and watch you do anything so silly.”

“You’re a fine one to talk about doing silly things.” I was pouting, of course. He had always managed to make me do that. Even when I was utterly in the right, he could twist things around to make it seem that I was the one being unreasonable. I particularly resented it under the present circumstances.

“Besides,” I said, “I like women. You know that. And I need someone like Margo. She’s very sweet, and lovely, and she’s stable. That’s more than you ever were, I might add.”

“Oh, stable!” Lorin threw his hands into the air. “There’s something about that word that calls to mind horse shit and other odious matters.” He plopped down heavily on the bed and gave me a shrewd look. “And don’t give me this noble I-like-women routine. I haven’t missed very much, you know. Margo Sellers, isn’t that her name? And the name of that engineering firm you work for?”

I frowned and tried to look indignant. “Sellers and Sellers. But if you think…”

“How are you doing with them, anyway?” he interrupted me rudely. “When I left, you were on just about the lowest rung of the ladder.”

“Well, I’ve done a little better.”

“A little?”

“I’m head of the planning department. But that’s got nothing to do with Margo. It’s just possible I might have some ability. Give me a little credit, for Christ’s sake.”

“Oh, I do, darling, I do. And aren’t you looking forward to another little promotion ere long?”

It was very annoying to argue with someone who apparently knew every little thing that was going on in my life. It seemed to me a man ought to be entitled to keep some secrets, particularly from someone who is dead.

“Since you already seem to know everything, yes, there’s been some talk, but nothing definite, of course, but some hints of my maybe becoming a full partner in the firm.”

“After the honeymoon, right?” Lorin smirked.

“Now cut that out! It’s just possible, you know, that I could be marrying Margo because I’m in love with her. It’s just possible.”

Lorin threw his head back and laughed. “Oh, I guess it is possible, but it does boggle the mind, darling, I must say.”

“Well, so do you,” I said angrily. “If I must be blunt, I’ve a good mind…”

“Paul?” It was Margo’s voice, from the hall.

“I do believe it’s Minnie the Mermaid,” Lorin said in a lower voice.

Before I could think what to do, Margo had reached the door, opened it, and swept into the room. I looked at her in dismay and then back to the bed. Thank Heaven he had had the tact to leave—or at any rate, he couldn’t be seen. I let out the breath I had been holding and turned back to Margo.

“Are you feeling better,” she asked.

“Oh, yes, much.”

“I don’t know.” She gave me a funny look. “You look as though you had seen a ghost.”