In For a Penny (23 page)
Authors: James P. Blaylock
“Very impressive,” Algernon told him, “but I’ll show you how it’s done.” He waved with both hands at his carton, which lifted entirely into the air and turned upside down, the dozen volumes inside floating out of it and moving away in all directions. Algernon conducted them with generous sweeping motions and a narrow concentration.
“Don’t over-reach yourself,” Lanyon said, and just as he uttered the warning, Johnson wandered into the room and barked in apparent amazement at the floating books. Algernon, taken unaware, flinched in surprise, and the books fell to the hardwood floor, making an amazingly loud banging noise in the still house. Out in the front room Boswell shouted, “Help! Ghosts! Murder!”
. . .
The sound of heavy objects thudding down onto the floor, followed by Boswell’s shouting, had brought Henley to consciousness, and he realized that once again he had fallen asleep in the chair. He stood up dizzily, and only just caught himself before he fell. When he was steady again he headed for the hallway, moving with slow determination. Hallucinations didn’t knock books off shelves. Boswell might pull one down now and again, but it would take a host of marauding Boswells to make the kind of racket that had awakened him.
If anything he felt even worse now that he was moving. He was out of breath, and his heart was fluttering again, and there was a hazy glow at the periphery of his vision. When he passed the door of Science and Nature the glow expanded to fill the room, as if a fog-shrouded lamp were burning within, and to his amazement he saw a three-volume set of books moving slowly through the air at head height. A voice very distinctly said, “Good evening, Henley,” and he saw what appeared to be the dark shade of a small fat man surrounded by a glowing aura. The floating books slipped into an open bit of shelf as two others arose from a box on the floor.
He heard Boswell chuckling out in the front room now, and saw Johnson step into the far end of the hallway, look at him curiously, and turn away again. Henley moved on by sheer will, steadying himself against the wall and fumbling to tie his robe shut. He looked into History and Philosophy, where his decanter of Scotch hovered tipsily, perhaps four feet off the ground, the glass stopper hanging inches above the decanter. Both of them turned in lazy circles, the amber liquid in the decanter swirling in a little maelstrom, the air heavy with the peaty smell of the whiskey. Again there was a diffused glow in the room, and again an aura that surrounded the dense shadow of someone who sat in the stuffed chair against the wall.” Cheers,” a voice said to him from the chair. Henley very nearly stepped in to secure the bottle, but he noticed out of the corner of his eye that whoever it was who haunted Science and Nature was apparently peering at him from the open door. He stepped away toward the kitchen, overwhelmed by the sensation that his chest was seized up in a vise and desperate now to find a chair of his own before he fell over.
But when he entered the front room he saw that there was still another ghost in the chair by the window—quite clearly an old man—and not merely a shadow now, but very nearly fleshed out, sitting with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. Henley felt an overwhelming grief in the air of the room, and without thinking he put out a hand and placed it on the man’s shoulder, but his hand passed right through, and the man didn’t look up.
Two other luminous spirits stood in Ghosts and Houses, apparently watching him. The shop was evidently alive with dead men. He distinctly heard one of them speak, suggesting to him that he sit down for the good of his heart. “Thank you,” he said, and from the doorway he looked in at the empty chair in the room and at the ghost trap that sat beside it on the table. Within the trap a tiny light burned, waxing and waning as it traveled past the aperture.
I’m dying, Henley whispered, filled with the immediate certainty of it, and in that moment his heart seized painfully in his chest and the gauzy light in the room seemed to him to expand into natural lamplight, the misty quality of it evaporating, and the man who was gesturing toward the chair was clearly his old friend John Lanyon. Henley felt a flush of happiness at seeing him, even as he toppled forward, borne down by a slow gravity, utterly unable to save himself except to clutch at a shelf of books, exerting the last of his earthly strength. The shelf gave way under his weight, and he fell to the floor, vaguely conscious of the small avalanche of books that pelted down onto him as he lay there, and then, in his last moment, of the pleasantly bookish smell of dusty paper mingled in the room with the smoky essence of whiskey and tobacco.
. . .
He awoke at night to the sound of rain. He was in Ghosts and Houses, although he had no idea how he had gotten there or what time it was or what day, and a little bit surprised to find that he didn’t care. He was wearing a suit, as if he had been meaning to go out. But if he had, he had no recollection of it. The pressure in his chest, blessedly, had subsided, and when he moved he could feel no twinge of lurking danger, and it occurred to him now that in fact he had never felt better in his life, with none of the old stiffness or achy joints. Johnson came into the room just then and looked around, cocking his head and peering at him undecidedly, as if his eyesight were weak.
“Here, boy,” Henley said, and the dog walked closer to him, stopping a foot or so away and then stretching out his neck and sniffing, regarding him suspiciously. After a moment Johnson wagged his tail.
“Ghosts!” Boswell shouted from his perch out in the front of the shop.
A figure appeared in the doorway—John Lanyon again. He smiled at Henley and turned back toward the front room. “Henley’s come round!” he said, and at that moment Henley’s nephew Jack walked into the room, carrying an arm full of books and stepping straight through Lanyon as if Lanyon weren’t there at all.
“Jack!” Henley said, happily surprised to see him, but Jack ignored him utterly, setting the books on the counter and taking a dog biscuit from his shirt pocket. He offered it to Johnson, who gobbled it up greedily, and then he picked up the books and set about shelving them.
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James P. Blaylock (1950 - )
James Paul Blaylock was born in Long Beach, California, in 1950, and attended California State University, where he received an MA. He was befriended and mentored by Philip K. Dick, along with his contemporaries K.W. Jeter and Tim Powers, and is regarded – along with Powers and Jeter – as one of the founding fathers of the steampunk movement. Winner of two World Fantasy Awards and a Philip K. Dick Award, he is currently director of the Creative Writing Conservatory at the Orange County High School of the Arts, where Tim Powers is Writer in Residence.
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © James P. Blaylock 2003
All rights reserved.
The right of James Blaylock to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2011 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 11771 6
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
