Ghosts and Other Lovers by Lisa Tuttle Read Free Book Online Page A

was being punished for something which was not her fault.
     
    Alone in her room, cut off from her family, she concentrated on extruding ectoplasm and forming it into shapes. She created shaky likenesses of Mildred and Lydia. She worked herself to exhaustion and beyond, determined to clear her system of the ghost-matter, to give the doctor, when he came, nothing to find. Let him think he had been called all the way out here for some fantasy of Mildred's.
    But it was no use. Perhaps she had been over-confident about the laws of cause and effect and in believing she had some control over what her body produced and when, for despite her labors, she woke the next morning lying in a puddle of something half liquid, half matter. And when Dr. Purves arrived in the afternoon, mucus dripped from her fingertips, her clothes clung stickily to damp flesh, and she felt trails of drool beside her mouth, on her brow, and beneath her ears.
    "Hmmm!" said Dr. Purves, and, "Well, well!" and, "What's this?" He didn't look revolted, horrified, or even astonished. There was, on his face, a carefully schooled, non-judgmental look of mild interest. "Feeling a bit hot, are we?"
    He thought it was perspiration. "No," said Eustacia hopelessly.
    "Ah, do you mind if I . . . ?"
    She gave him her hand, and felt the surprise he did not allow to register on his face. He looked at her hand, touched the stuff, waited, watching it well up again. "Hmmm. And how long has this been going on?"
    She told him. He asked questions and she answered them truthfully. He did not ask her what she thought was happening to her or why, so she did not tell him about Mr. Elphinstone or the matter produced by the bodies of mediums for the use of those who had passed over. She didn't tell him that she could, with her thoughts, increase the flow and cause it to shape itself into images. Dr. Purves was a man of science; she knew he would not believe her, and she didn't believe he could help her. Undoubtedly, Mildred hoped the doctor would be able to give a name to Eustacia's disease and also provide the cure, but she knew otherwise. She knew, now, watching him watch her, that he had never seen the like of this before, and that he didn't like it.
    He asked her to undress. He examined her. He told her he was taking a sample for testing. She watched him scoop a tendril of ectoplasm from her armpit into a small glass bottle and cap it firmly. The piece he had captured was the size of a garden snail without the shell. She watched him put the bottle safely away in his bag. By the time he got home, perhaps even by the time he left this house, that bottle would be empty. Would he come back for more, or would he decide it had never existed, preferring not to know anything that might contradict his rational view of the universe?
    While she was dressing, he washed his hands very thoroughly. She wondered if soap and water were a protection, or if she had now infected him. But perhaps the doctor, skeptical of spiritualism, would be protected by science and his own unbelief. She wondered how he would explain it, and what he would do, if his body began leaking ectoplasm.
    "Now, you're not to worry," he said. "Rest, don't exert yourself. Keep yourself warm. And clean. Wash and, er, change your sheets as often as you feel the need."
    "What's wrong with me?"
    "There's nothing wrong. You mustn't think that. Didn't I say you weren't to worry? Just keep warm and rest and you'll soon be as right as rain. I'll have a word with your sister before I go, about your diet. I'll tell her everything she needs to know." He made his escape before she could ask again.
    She slumped back in her bed with a grim smile. She hadn't expected an intelligent reply. She knew he didn't know what was wrong with her, and no amount of thinking, no amount of study, no amount of second opinions from his learned colleagues, would change that. Even if he locked her up in a hospital somewhere and watched her day and night, he'd be