I started walking back towards Quaker Hill, away from the cemetery. I heard Jane calling after me, but I didn't listen. She would only beg me not to leave her, to come and join her, to stay with her and be her lover, and no matter how painfully I missed her, no matter what I would have done for a chance to see her again, touch her again, be with her again, I wasn't prepared to kill myself. When you've met the dead, you understand the value of life.
I was only about a third of the way back to the top of Quaker Lane when I caught sight of two or three of the apparitions from the cemetery, keeping abreast of me on the brow of the hill, about twenty yards away. I looked back, and there were more behind me, twelve or thirteen of them at least. And off to my left, about a half-dozen more were following me along the shoreline.
As they came, they kept up that high keening sound. Sometimes it was shrill and distinct, at other times it was blown away by the wind. But it was all around me, an eerie supernatural warcry, as if the dead of Waterside Cemetery were after my blood.
I began to jog, not too fast at first, to see whether the apparitions could keep up with me. They flickered and flew just as quickly, in a strange pell-mell motion, some of them running, some of them tumbling over in the way that Jane's ghost had done, some of them soaring arms-stretched with their burial robes fluttering in the ocean wind, like charnel-house kites. I felt a deep and historical terror within me, the kind of terror that people must have felt in the 17th century when leprous beggars came to town, hopping and skipping and horrendously diseased. And all the time there was that whistling and keening, almost joyous now, as if they knew that they could catch me.
I started running in earnest now. But how fast could they go? Perhaps they could easily outstrip me, and they were simply keeping their distance for the sport of it. Still, I couldn't worry too much about that. The only thing I could do was to get back to Quaker Lane Cottage as fast as I could.
And then what? I thought. Jane's apparition found it easy enough to get inside. This evening, she had opened the front door without even touching the handle. I heard my breath whining and my trouser-legs jostling against each other as I ran, and I thought to myself: don't even consider the possibility. Just run.
I glanced to my right. The grisly apparitions were keeping well up with me, dancing and turning in the wind. On my left, the shoreline began to narrow and to edge in closer, and I could see the apparitions distinctly, running towards me in mesmerizing slow motion, and yet easily catching up. I didn't dare to look over my shoulder, because the keening behind my back had seemed to be closer than ever, and I could have sworn that I heard the sea-grass whispering as the apparitions rushed through it.
I was only 200 yards away from Quaker Lane Cottage when I realized that I couldn't possibly make it. My legs felt as if they were clumsy prosthetics, carved out of heavy wood. My breath shrieked in and out my lungs, and I was smothered in ice-cold sweat. And all the while, the blue-white apparitions were rushing after me, with decayed and inhuman urgency, the beggars of the night.
I felt something claw at my hair, like a bat or a half-rotted hand. I frantically beat it off, and started running faster again, forcing my legs to take me up the sloping hill, forcing my knees through the barrier of total exhaustion and total pain. The rushing noises came nearer, until I knew that the apparitions were almost at my shoulder, keening and crying and whispering to me, stop, stop, join us, don't leave us, come back.
I felt myself suddenly lifted up — physically lifted up off the ground — and then tossed and tumbled head over heels on to the rough grassy hillside. I tried to scramble to my feet, but then I was hurled on to my back by some completely invisible force, hurled so forcibly that I heard my vertebrae crack, and the air gasp out of my lungs. I tried to get up a second time, but I was slammed back to the ground yet again, and this time I was paralyzed, pinned against the grass and the rocks as if some enormous weight were pressing on to me.
The apparitions gathered around me, the fading electrical power that had once been their spirits crawling like glow-worms across their scaly and ulcerated faces. They made a noise, like soft old tissue-paper, crumpled and recrumpled over years of use; like the breathing you can hear in an old and deserted attic, when there's no-one there. And there was a distinctive odour, too, not so much of fleshy decay, but.of burned electricity terminals, and rotting fish.
They surrounded me, but they made no immediate move to touch me. I lay where I was, pinned down panting for breath, scared out of my mind and yet still wondering what the hell I could do now. Even in the throes of a scarlet panic, the human mind still plots and schemes and programmes for its own survival.
The apparitions stood back a little, and Jane appeared, very tall now, her face stretched out almost beyond recognition.
'You are mi-i-i-ne,' she said, blurrily. I felt as if time had slowed down, as if the atmosphere had turned to glycerin, and even my struggles against the unseen weight that was holding me down seemed to take endless minutes.
Jane spread out her long-fingered hands, and electricity crackled from one fingertip to the other, like a Van der Graaf generator. She seemed to have built up more power now, because her body was flickering and flashing, and processions of sparks teemed off her shoulders and out of her hair as if she were infested with them. The smell of burning grew even stronger, and I felt a shudder go through the assembled apparitions, as if they were all sharing in Jane's massive discharge of psychic energy.
It had to be enough to kill me. It had to be enough to release my spirit, and leave my body electrocuted on the hillside, another strange and inexplicable fatality. Then I too would be haunting Granitehead, searching for Gilly perhaps, to bring her into the hosts of the dead.
Jane touched me with her fingers, and I felt a numbing shock of current. My left leg involuntarily jerked, and my left eyelid fluttered uncontrollably.
'You can join me now,' whispered Jane. 'It would have been better if you had done it by accident, or of your own free will… but I cannot wait for you any longer. I love you, John. I want to make love to you.'
Her outstretched fingers came closer. I could see the electricity creeping along the lines on her palms, along the lifeline and the heartline and the head-line. There were even sparkling charges in her nails, and around her wrists. The human energy of a lifetime was being expended to bring me with her to the grave.
I struggled and fought, but the pressure on my chest remained immovable. All round me, the apparitions began to sing and scream, a terrible high cacophony like a madhouse. Right next to my face stood the fleshless leg of a decaying woman, the bones of her toes glowing phosphorescently. A little further away, a hooded man stood with half of his face corroded away, one lidless eye glaring at me ferociously.
'You can't call this love!' I shouted at Jane, my voice high with fear. This isn't what we got married for! This isn't why we wanted to have our baby! God, if you love me, Jane, let me go!'