Smoke Ghost & Other Apparitions

by Fritz Leiber

  I was losing my balance – it was by companion dragging my arm. "Come on," she yelled. "Same plan, only we run."

  We ran. Halfway to the stalled escalator we were given an extra shove by the great muffled thunderclap of the explosion. I pounded down the dark silvery, gritty stairs, recklessly for me, watching her draw farther and farther ahead. And then, by God, I heard her whistling loud in a fast, rocking rhythm. It was the cavalry charge, so help me!

  She waited at the bottom to point me left, make sure I got it. And then as I was loping down the west corridor, nearing my goal, the windows ahead of me were painted with a bright red flash against which the small figure of the Empire State was silhouetted. This time they'd struck beyond her, had her bracketed. The third shell...

  I shot into the north corridor and came to an arm-waving halt just as the dark glass ahead of me bent inward, but did not shatter, with the second muffled thunderclap. And then I faced myself at where the bent black figures were toiling exultantly in their reloading and I held my receiver out in front of me. I remember I held it gripped between right thumb and bent forefinger with the lioness' head looking at them (that seemed important, though the girl hadn't said so) and with my left hand gripped around my right. My legs were bent and spread wide too, so that I must have looked like some improbably elderly macho with a magnum straight out of TV.

  I didn't see her arrive beyond them (she was probably there ahead of me) but suddenly my conjoined hands were tingling and there was a narrow sheaf of bright violet lines fanning out from that double fist to touch the extremities of the ugly gun and around it illumine staring ghost eyes and spectral mouths gaping with surprise within black hoods, before they drew together again (the violet lines) into a glowing point which showed me, just above it, very tiny – her face – for all the world as if she and I were playing cats' cradle together with the fluorescent violet string, the gun the figure we'd created.

  The tingling spread to my arms and shoulders, but I didn't drop my receiver or writhe around very much.

  Then the lines vanished (and my hands stopped tingling) but a swirled Kirlian aura of the same shade of violet hung around the gun, making it glow all over as though new-forged and highlighting the frozen figures around it. Then one of those figures reached out slowly and fearfully and touched the muzzle, and at that point a very fine iridescent violet snowfall began, the individual flakes winking out before they touched the deck, and the snowfall spreading rapidly, eating its way into the glowing metal, until the entire gun had trickled away into dust.

  The frozen figures broke then into such a frenzy of arm-and-thigh-gripping, and head-twitching, that it was like a battle (or an orgy) in a soundless hell. Then most of them raced away from me, but two toward me, and I heard a high sweet whistling, three mounting notes. She was sounding taps, the retreat.

  I was already in flight. The west corridor seemed longer than it had coming. She was waiting for me again at the foot of the escalator, but started up as soon as she saw me. I'd not mounted a dozen steps when the faint tattoo of our pursuers' footsteps was abruptly amplified as they poured into the south corridor. It didn't so much frighten me as make me feel wild – an unfamiliar sort of excitement.

  I was panting before I was halfway up. I could hear her breathing hard too, though I think she deliberately slowed down so as not to get too far ahead. When I got to the top I did a foolish, show-off thing – I took the deepest gasping breath I could and then turned and bellowed inarticulately down the stairs – roared, you might say, perhaps in honor of the lioness clenched in my fist. And then I went dancing out onto the catwalk, not straight ahead following her, but around the opposite way, with some crazy idea of drawing the pursuit away from her, and pausing to turn and bellow nastily once or twice more.

  My storybook ruse didn't work at all. The main body of our silent pursuers went racing after her without even hesitating, though a couple did come skulking after me. She paused at the railing gap to shake her fist at me, or wave me on, I don't know which, and then she ran down the slanting ladder, and across the roof to its northwest corner, and up and out onto the rickety suspension bridge. Two of her pursuers stopped and made hurling motions, there were sharp reports and then two bright white lights were floating above her head and then slowly past her – star-grenades, to give them a name.

  She was halfway across the bridge when a swarm of figures appeared at its other end. The glare showed them to be black-clad, black-hooded. She stopped. Then, pausing only for a sweeping gesture of defiance – or a wave of farewell – she ducked under one of the main wires and dove down head first, her green cloak trailing behind her. Almost at once the roof edge cut her off from my sight and there were only the eagerly bent, black-hooded heads peering down.

  And then, without warning, there was clapped over my face from behind a double handful of fine-grained darkness that was soft as soot, intimate as cobweb, somehow oily and dry at the same time, and instantly cutting off all sight and breath. In my convulsive struggles, during which I was thrown down on my back, I lifted my hands to my face and though I did not manage to tear whatever it was away, I became able to see through it dimly and draw shallow breaths. I made a supreme effort and then -

  Have you ever begun to wake up from a nightmare that's happening in the same room you're actually sleeping in, and for a while been able to see both rooms at the same time, the nightmare one and the real one, almost coinciding but not quite? It was that way with me. It was night and I was down on my back on the open observation deck of Tower Two at the World Trade Center and there were people bent over me and handling me. And sometimes the sky would be utterly black and the faces hooded ones and the hands gripping cruelly to hurt. And then the dark sky would have a pale cast with reflected light and the faces open and solicitous, and the hands gentle and trying to help. After a brief but dizzying alteration the second scene won out, you might say, and I was drawn to my feet and supported and patted and told that a doctor had been summoned. Apparently I'd been walking along quite normally, enjoying the view (though one person maintained I'd looked troubled), when I'd suddenly collapsed in a faint or a fit. I offered no explanations, suppressed my agitation and astonishment as well as I could, and waited. I remember looking down from time to time at the diamond pattern of New York's street lights (they looked so very far below!) and being greatly reassured by that, so much so that once or twice I almost forgot why I felt so bereaved and forlorn.

  I let myself be taken to the hospital, where they couldn't find much of anything wrong with me (except that after a bit I felt very tired) and from which my son retrieved me the next day. After a while I told him the whole story, but he's professed himself no more able than I am to decide between what seem to be the two chief possible explanations: that I suffered an extremely vivid and protracted hallucination, during which I moved through the World Trade Center completely blacked out (and possibly through the subway and Rockefeller Plaza in the same state), or that I actually time-traveled.

  And if it were a hallucination, when did it begin? (Or if the other, when did that begin?) At the Pool of the Planets? Or even earlier, with my first glimpse of the Girl in Green? Or when I dashed into the express elevator and found it dark (there had been my feeling of breaking through a barrier at that point)? There are endless possibilities.

  Did I hallucinate the old Jew, was he completely fabricated from materials in my unconscious? Or was he an intermediate stage in my time travel, belonging to an era somewhere between today and that blackly overwhelmed New York of the future? Or was he completely real, just one more freak at large in today's city?

  My tired feeling afterwards convinced me of one thing – that whether an experience is real or hallucinatory (or a dream, for that matter, or even something you write), you always have to put the same amount of work into it, it takes the same energy, it takes as much out of you. Does that say something about outer and inner space? (My son says, "Don't dream so strenuously next time," though of course h
e says that's entirely my choice.)

  If it was a hallucination, one thing that has to be explained is when and where I acquired the small and very heavy stylized sculpture of a lioness I had tightly clenched in my left fist at the end of my experience. No one has been able to identify the tawny material composing it, or its style or school, though resemblances have been noted to Bufano's work and to the stitcheries of Martha McElroy. I've experimented with it a bit, I admit, but it appears to have no mystical or weird scientific properties, though I do think it helps my breathing. I carry it as a pocket piece now. Might come in handy some day -though I suppose that's a rather foolish thought.

  As for the Young Woman in Green, I have a theory about her. I don't think she plunged to her death when she went off the suspension bridge between the two towers -she'd never have leaped off so lightheartedly unless she'd known she had a way of escape. No, I don't mean she sprouted wings or broke out a small jet or levitation unit after she'd fallen out of my sight. But from what the old Jew told me of the Dreck, and from my own observations of it I think it is like soft, powdery new-fallen snow, able to cushion any fall, from no matter how great a height. And I think there are ways of living in it, of moving and breathing, no matter how deeply one is buried. She implied as much when she told me about the additional value of my receiver. And she did have her firer with her at the end. I tell myself she survived.

  In any case, my feelings about her are such that I would very much like to find her again, even if it were only to begin another hallucination.

  I'M LOOKING FOR JEFF

  AT six-thirty that afternoon, Martin Bellows was sitting at the bar of the Tomtoms. In front of him was a tall glass of beer and behind the bar were two men in white aprons. The two men, one of them so old he was past caring about it, were discussing a matter – and while Martin wasn't really listening, much of the discussion seemed to be for his entertainment.

  "If that girl comes in again I won't serve her. And if she starts to get funny I'll give her some real eye-shadow!"

  "Regular fire eater, aren't you, Pops?"

  "All this week, ever since she started to come in here, there's been trouble."

  "Listen to him, will you? Aw, Pops, there's always trouble at a bar. Either somebody makes a play for somebody's girl, or else it's two life-long buddies–"

  "I mean nasty trouble. What about those two girls Monday night? What about what the big guy did to Jack? What about Jake and Janice picking the Tomtoms to break up, and the way they did it? She was behind it every time. What about the broken glass in the cracked ice?"

  "Shut up! Pops is nuts, friend. He gets wild ideas."

  Martin Bellows looked up from his beer at Sol, the young working owner of the Tomtoms, and at the other man behind the bar. Then he glanced down the empty stretch of polished mahogany and over his shoulder at the dim, silent stretches of the booths, where the lights from behind the bar hardly picked up the silver and gilt. He grimaced faintly.

  "Anything for a little life."

  "Life!" Pops snorted. "That isn't what she'd give you, Mister."

  There's no lonelier place in the world than a nightspot in the early hours of evening. It makes one think of all the guys who are alone – without a girl or a friend – restlessly searching. Its noiseless gloom is a sounding board for the faintest fears and aches of the heart. Its atmosphere, used to being pushed around by the loud mouths of happy drunks, is stagnant. The dark corners that should be filled with laughter and desire are ghostly. The bandstand, with the empty chairs sitting around in lifelike positions.

  Martin felt it and hitched his stool an inch closer to the old man and the anxious, sharp-eyed Sol.

  "Tell me about her, Pops," he said to the old man. "No, let him, Sol."

  "All right, but I'm warning you it's a pipe dream."

  Pops ignored his boss's remark. He spun the glass he was polishing in a slower rhythm. His face, puffed by beer and thumbed into odd hills and gullies by a lifetime of evanescent but illuminating experiences, grew thoughtful. Outside, traffic moaned and a distant train hooted. Pops pressed his lips together, bringing out a new set of hummocks in his cheeks.

  "Name's Bobby," he began abruptly. "Blonde. About twenty. Always orders brandies. Smooth, kid face, except for the faintest scar that goes all the way across it. Black dress that splits down to her belly-button."

  A car slammed to a stop outside. The three men looked up. But after a moment they heard the car go on.

  "Never set eyes on her till last Sunday night," Pops continued. "Says she's from Michigan City. Always asking for a guy named Jeff. Always waiting to start her particular kind of hell."

  "Who's this Jeff?" Martin asked.

  Pops shrugged.

  "And what's her particular kind of hell?"

  Pops shrugged again, this time in Sol's direction. "He don't believe in her," he said gruffly.

  "I'd like to meet her, Pops," Martin said smilingly. "Like some excitement. Beginning to feel a big evening coming on. And Bobby sounds like my kind of a girl."

  "I wouldn't introduce her to my last year's best friend!"

  Sol laughed lightly but conclusively. He leaned across the bar, confidentially, glancing back at the older man with secretive humor. He touched Martin's sleeve. "You've heard Pop's big story. Now get this: I've never been able to notice this girl, and I'm always here until I close. So far as I know, nobody's ever been able to notice her except Pops. I think she's just one of his pipe dreams. You know, the guy's a little weak in the head." He leaned a bit closer and spoke in a loud and mocking stage-whisper. "Used weed when he was a boy."

  Pop's face grew a bit red, and the new set of hummocks stood out more sharply. "All right, Mr. Wise," he said. "I got something for you."

  He put the glass down in the shining ranks, hung up the towel, fished a cigar box from under the bar.

  "Last night she forgot her lighter," he explained. "It's covered with a dull, shiny black stuff, same as her dress. Look!"

  The other two men leaned forward, but when Pops flipped up the cover there was nothing inside but the white paper lining.

  Sol looked around at Martin with a slow grin. "You see?"

  Pops swore and ripped out the lining. "One of the band must have swiped it!"

  Sol laid his hand gently on the older man's arm. "Our musicians are nice, honest boys, Pops."

  "But I tell you I put it there last thing last night."

  "No, Pops, you just thought you did." He turned to Martin. "Not that strange things don't sometimes happen in bars. Why, just these last few days–"

  A door slammed. The three men looked around. But it must have been a car outside, for nothing came in.

  "Just these last few days," Sol repeated, "I've been noticing the damnedest thing."

  "What?" Martin asked.

  Sol shot another of his secretively humorous glances toward Pops. "I'd like to tell you," he explained to Martin, "but I can't in front of Pops. He gets ideas."

  Martin got off his stool, grinning. "I got to go anyhow. I'll see you later."

  Not five minutes later, Pops smelled the perfume. A rotten, sickly smell. And his ears caught the mouse-faint creaking of the midmost barstool, and the tiny, ghostly sigh. And the awful feel of it went deep down inside him and grated on his bones like chalk. He began to tremble.

  Then the creaking and the sigh came again through the gloom of the Tomtoms, a little impatiently, and he had to turn, although it was the last thing he wanted to do, and he had to look at the emptiness of the bar. And there, at the midmost stool, he saw it.

  It was terribly indistinct, just a shadowy image superimposed on the silvers and gilts and midnight blues of the far wall, but he knew every part of it. The gleaming blackness of the dress, like the sheerest black silk stocking held up in the near darkness. The pale gold of the hair, like motes in the beam of an amber spotlight. The paleness of face and hands, like puffs of powder floating up from a spilled compact. The eyes, like two tiny dark moths,
hovering.

  "What's the matter, Pops?" Sol asked sharply.

  He didn't hear the question. Although he'd have given anything not to have to do it, he was edging shakily down the bar, hand grasping the inner margin for support, until he stood before the midmost stool.

  Then he heard it, the faint clear voice that seemed to ride a mosquito's whine, as they say the human voice rides a radio wave. The voice that knifed deep, deep into his head.

  "Been talking about me, Pops?"

  He just trembled.

  "Seen Jeff tonight, Pops?'

  He shook his head.

  "What's the matter, Pops? What if I'm dead and rotting? Don't shake so, Pops. You should be complimented I show myself to you. You know, Pops, at heart every woman's a stripper. But most of them just show themselves to the guy they like, or need. I'm that way. I don't show myself to the bums. And now give me a drink."

  His trembling only increased.

  The twin moths veered toward him. "Got polio, Pops?"

  In a spasm of haste he jerked around, stooping. By blind fumbling he found the brandy bottle under the ranked glasses, poured a shaky shot, set it down on the bar and stepped back.

  "What the hell are you up to!"

  He didn't even hear the angry question, or realize that Sol was moving toward him. Instead, he stood pressed back as far as he could, and watched the powdercloud fingers wind around the shot glass like tendrils of smoke, and heard the bat-shrill voice laugh ruefully and say, "Can't manage it that way, haven't got the strength enough yet," and watched the twin moths, and something red and white-edged just below them, dip toward the brandy.

  Then for a moment a feeling reached out and touched Sol, for though no hand was on the bar, the shot glass shook, and a little rill of brandy snaked down its side and pooled on the mahogany.

  "What the..." Sol began, and then finished, "those damn trucks, they shake the whole neighborhood."